Adnan Ali Khalaf Alrubaye, Ph.D.presented at the October 2018 Teaching with Technology Workshops on using Apple iPad and Apple TV along with the Apple Pencil to present his lectures.
Adnan Ali Khalaf Alrubaye, Ph.D.
Department of Biological Sciences
Associate Director of Graduate Program in Cell and Molecular Biology
“Freedom from the Podium”
Why use an Ipad?
Blackboard ‘Digital Native’ from kfenter on Vimeo.
Dr. Alrubaye showed this video which talks about the current digital native learner and how to reach them. This is one of the main reasons that he uses the iPad. It is a way of meeting the students where they are. It resets attention spans because even when we are interested in a subject our attention will start to wander around the ten-minute mark.
- Provides Freedom from the Podium
- Engagement
- Modern technology
- Interactive
- Convenient
- Helps improve lecture delivery in large classrooms
- Improves teaching evaluations
Basics of using the Ipad with Apple TV in teaching
You will need:
- Ipad updated to the latest IOS, IOS 12.0
- Apple TV
- Apple Pencil
Dr. Alrubaye suggests looking for some of the small grants available for teaching on campus in order to fund your purchase of these. The TIPS Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts will keep you informed about when those grants become available.
Creating your Presentation
He went over how to build your PowerPoint within Keynote, but also said that you can use PowerPoint as well, which all University Faculty have access to. This article from Apple will give you the basics. How to build your PowerPoint using Keynote
You can also prepare your presentation on your PC or Mac desktop. Just be aware of the fact that fonts may change if you create it on a Windows machine and then present on the iPad. Storing your files online makes it easy to get them onto your iPad. Box, OneDrive, or iCloud are all good solutions for that.
Presenting your Presentation
Dr. Alrubaye talked about the basics of how to present using Keynote and Apple Pencil.
He demonstrated the following steps:
- Fully charge your iPad and Apple pencil
- If Apple pencil is not working, connect the pencil directly to the iPad through the charge port and check the battery level
- Connect your iPad to Apple TV
- Start your presentation
- Use the Apple pencil as a pencil or pointer.
- How to move slides forward and backward
- Add new slides for explanation purposes
- How to play an animation
- How to exit your presentation
Issues and Suggestions
- Check your iPad’s connection to the Apple Pencil and Apple TV and practice before class
- Buy an extra HDMI cable
- You never know when your cable is going to go bad so you might need a replacement.
- Connect your Apple TV to an Ethernet cable. The connection is more stable than wireless.
- Name your Apple TV a Funny name like Apple_TV_Rulez
- He names his MicroBio_Family, because he tells his students that they are his family for the semester.
- Keep your Apple TV remote handy, because sometimes the Apple TV will disconnect and the fastest way to get it to connect again is with the remote.
- The remote is also required for the first-time set up of the Apple TV.
- Upload your presentation to a cloud storage service, but keep a copy of it on a thumb drive too just in case.
- “Something will go wrong.” So be as prepared as you can be and ready to try an alternative if you have to.
- Always connect your iPad to UARK WiFi and not UARK Guest.
- Students can’t take over your Apple TV and present from theirs except by two-way authentication.
- Block notifications while you are in Keynote to prevent them from popping up while you’re presenting.
- Apple has a training program that may help you to incorporate iPads into your course called the Apple Teacher Certification.
This content was developed from a presentation by Adnan Ali Khalaf Alrubaye which was sponsored by TIPS and the The Wally Cordes Teaching and Faculty Support Center (TFSC) at the University of Arkansas.