My Digital Workspace(s)

My Workspace(s)

Whether at home, on the road, at a variety of different libraries around town, or at Parkland College I invariably have one or both of these pieces of technology with me (iPad & MacBook).  Shortly after my son's birth my now disassembled desktop computer became very impractical to use.  Since then my workspace has become the couch, the dining room table, any empty bench at a library, and everything in between.

Workspace @ home

I do the majority of my grading and draft review of student papers from home.  Although I am contemplating migrating these activities to my iPad (see my dream workspace), for now my MacBook is the main tool for these activities (which is about the only time I use my laptop).

• Angel:  Although Parkland is in the process of migrating to new technology, for now all my course materials are kept on Angel.  I provide students a copy of the syllabus, all assignments, and some readings.  Additionally, I collect all completed assignments through drop boxes on Angel.  Most graded materials are also returned via Angel.

• SugarSync: My current semester classes are all saved via SugarSync.  I use this primarily as a backup tool so I always have copies of graded papers even if my laptop stops working.  However, there are times when my laptop battery is low, students are borrowing my laptop, or I've forgotten to bring it that SugarSync has saved the day.  It's quite easy to set up the semester folder to sync and just let it do its thing.
• GoodReader: This is a pdf reader that I use on my iPad for pretty much everything ranging from pen and paper role playing games to reading for this class.  I have used it to test out commenting for student papers and to read scholarship.

My Office (Parkland College)

The part time faculty in the Humanities department at Parkland share two offices.  One office is fairly small (for about six faculty) and the other is quite large (for about sixteen faculty).  I have a file cabinet in the large office and typically hold office hours there.  The office has about six desktop computers and a printer along with several shelves of books.  I tend to do work in this office with my own laptop unless I need to print out material.  Working in this shared space means that I may be at a different desk at a variety of times.

My Dream Workspace

I simply love my iPad.  When I finally breakdown and buy a keyboard / case that I love for it I'd really like to do all my teacher related work on it.  A key part of that will be seeing if and how Cloudon (or a service like it) works with my iPad.

Cloudon lets me access Word via a client application on my iPad.  The actual copy of Word is running on some server some place.  Perhaps not the most secure set up, but it really provides the 'laptop' feel on the iPad.  Some of the road blocks are quickly and easily copying students electronic files, ensuring the security of those files, and the performance of providing comments over such a system.