iPads Wireshare and Guided Access saved the day

Today I had a student who needed to view a video and take notes while the rest were studying. Normally I use a spare room that has an eBoard or wait till I get into the lab, but neither were possible at the time and this student needed to do this exercise today. As my students don’t have tablets or laptops, and their phones would not be suitable for this exercise, I was stumped. I didn’t want to lend the student my own laptop as I was using it, plus there were many personal documents I didn’t want students to have access to.  

My iPad also had personal documents on it so I didn’t want to use it either. Then I remembered that iPads have an accessibility limiter called Guided Access. This allows anyone to limit access to only one app and you can even restrict spaces on the app. For example, you could prevent someone from changing the browser page by not allowing them to access the url area at the top of the browser page. You can find out how to implement this iPad feature here: Guided Access 

Next hurdle – the video was on my laptop, not my iPad. I could put it in a folder in a Box.com folder or Google Drive folder and wait for the video to be transferred that way, but that would most likely take far too long.  Then I remembered the numerous wireless transfer apps I had downloaded, and that option offered the possibility of a speedier transfer.  I have used File Hub in the past but decided to try the Wireshare app this time. I opened up the app on my iPad and then on my laptop browser I typed in the web address that Wireshare displayed. At that web address I was asked to select a file to upload to my iPad. Within 5 minutes the 250 MB video was in my iPad. 

Soon after, my student was set up in a spare classroom and doing the exercise.

Note: You can use this method to transfer any files from your iPad to your laptop. You may have to first transfer the file from it original app The picture below shows the video which I uploaded from my laptop and a photo I selected from my iPad’s camera roll which I could download to my laptop. 

Laptop view:

wireshare

wireshare

iPad view

ipad wireshare ipad

 

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