Many apps on the iPad work without any wifi at all. We have become accustomed to being connected when working with access to a plethora of resources because an internet connection is just part of our everyday working lives now, but sometimes it isn’t available. Many of the apps that you can get for your iPad will work off of wifi so here are my most interesting 5 ways you can use your iPad without wifi…
Prepare resources
There are lots of great apps to enable you to create resources on your iPad that don’t require an internet connection. Why not use Keynote to map out some resource slides for a lesson or a video for children to use in your flipped classroom on Explain Everything. One thing I’ve always liked to do which doesn’t require wifi is to afford myself of the lack of distraction from social media and do some writing. Pages is such a powerful word processor (as is Google Docs in many ways too) and both mean that you can prepare meeting agenda, newsletters for your school, department or team.
Learning Menu made using Pages for iPad
Write your emails
It might not seem like a fun job or even that interesting but often you need to get through and clear a list of emails that need writing. I often prefer to do these offline anyway. By writing your emails offline it means you won’t be distracted by the other 32 that are there waiting to be dealt with and get yours written first. Don’t forget if you’re a gmail or G Suite user you can use tools such as Boomerang to defer or schedule your emails too.
Sketch out your lesson planning
There are loads of free sketching tools out there. My “go to” tool has been Paper by 53 for a long time but the humble Notes app by Apple which comes installed as standard is a pretty good sketching tool in its own right.
Here’s one sketchnote I made in a recent meeting whilst using Paper:
Meeting notes from Thomas’
Here’s another I made using the Notes app on my iPad:
Lesson schedule
Whilst not as pretty as Paper 53, it has the tools and palette to create useful plans which can easily be accessed on all of your Apple devices (once you’re on wifi again of course!).
Read
There aren’t many that would argue that reading for pleasure is important. As educators however it’s also important to stay abreast of your own professional development and reading can help with this massively too. The many books that are available on the iBooks store for professional learning make accessing them easy once you’ve downloaded them. When better a time to catch up on them when you’re off wifi, perhaps on the daily commute. If you’re looking for great content try searching for ‘Apple Education’ or ‘One Best Thing’ for some great free professional learning titles.
Celebrate learning
Many teachers will take photos and videos of learning in the classroom. There are lots of great collaging tools out there to collate the images into one space such as Moldiv. Another way of celebrating learning and topics is through video. Many people love the quick and simple nature of an iMovie trailer but even they take a fair while to knock together. Why not as an alternative check out the (now owned by GoPro) awesome ‘Quik‘ app out. Super simple to use and you can have a really professional looking little video to showcase learning to your students in no time at all. Free for the very basic version, it’s well worth trying out. If you need to blur out any faces in your pictures before making a video or sharing anything publicly then you can do this easily too with the free ‘Annotable‘ app. There’s a short video I made below to show how to use the Annotable app too if you’re interested.
I don’t have a video for the Quik app however I am positive that you’ll have something amazing made in minutes without any training or support at all.
I hope you found these short ideas helpful. If you have any other things you like to do with your iPad when off wifi then please share them below in the comments. Thanks!
