Volume Purchase Program - 50% off Apps for Schools

Apple has recently implemented an update to the "Volume Purchase” program.  This program allows educational institutions to receive a 50% discount when 20 or more copies of the same app are purchased.  This is a significant saving for the educational institution especially if they have already outlayed for the iPad devices.


Sign up to the Program by visiting: http://edu-vpp.apple.com/asvpp.html

One person at your school will need to register as the Program Manager. At the time of purchase, redeem codes are allocated. These are then distributed to the staff members or students. Each person receiving the code then simply logins to their iTunes account and redeems the code in the same way they do with an iTunes card.

http://edu-vpp.apple.com/asvpp.html

Flipboard

I can't believe that I have not written about this cool iPad App before. It was one of the first things I used on the iPad and one of the first things that I integrated into my lessons.

My senior art class linked our twitter page to our iPads and we were literally able to create our own textbooks. We were studying Picasso and the development of Modernism at the time and set up a series of tags in Tweetdeck so that all the feeds were fed directly back to our Flipboard app.

Flipboard turned these into a beautiful magazine style document that was constantly updated with news, information and current exhibition reviews. This became a valuable resource. There was a retrospective in New York we knew nothing about with a great website that really complimented what we were studying.

http://www.flipboard.com

Interactive iPad Reading Experience

I found a reference to a new iPad app over at iPadmodo. I love the sound of this novel, but what really excited me was the concept of these sensory rich, interactive and immersive books for kids. This opens up a whole new area for students to experience the world around them. Imagine science textbooks where the student's sensory perception was used to interact with digital experiments or even art texts where the artists and artworks became immersive experiences. We will never be able to stop them reading their English novels now. Anyway have a look at the press release and watch the video the producers have supplied - this is an exciting development in the way that apps are being designed.

Level 26: Dark Prophecy is a 400-page interactive e-book and an hour-long film experience. The central character Steve Dark is your partner is solving this new form of crime thriller. The new iPad app “lets readers literally use their senses as they read. You’ll see blood splattering, glass shattering and even get to dig deeper into each character’s background.” This is more than a digital novel, it is an immersive and interactive story that involves a creative puzzle solving component to the gritty crime narrative.

Dark prophecy contains several movie segments that bridge the reading portion of the e-book into video storytelling and visual narration.

“Readers also interact with the book as they work with Steve Dark to collect character bios and uncover evidence unlocked as they read to catch the villain,” according to the press release.

You can actually choose your own way to experience Dark Prophecy. The featured version is called “Ultimate Digi-Novel” but there is also an option to experience the e-book in “Traditional” or text-only form as well as a less-immersive or interactive digital version called “Digi-Novel.”

This is an opportunity is to experience a creative and new form of interactive storytelling. We are really just starting to see the boundaries pushed of what the iPad is capable of offering. Interestingly, the app concept was developed by Anthony Zuiker the creator of the television series CSI, so you can imagine the type of sensory perception and interaction on offer.