Friday, April 22, 2011

Starting to Play - Volume Purchasing Voucher Challenges

I finally got the first six iPad2's - those designated for faculty. These are 64G and 3G enabled. My first challenge was to figure out how to manage the Volume Purchasing vouchers we bought. It was not a simple process to purchase an app (Brushes) and send it to my iPad.

Volume Purchasing Program
We included Volume Purchasing vouchers in the grant. To redeem them, you go to the Volume Purchasing site on Apple.com and log in the number on a gift card that they sent us. This done, you must search for your app by name on this site. This required going back to the App Store and exploring the apps there to decide on what to buy. I knew I wanted to play with Brushes, so I chose to buy that.

Next, I was sent an Excel file, via email, with the link to the purchase, which would cause the app to upload to my iTunes. Here's the rub: I didn't have Excel on my iMac or, needless to say, on the iPad. So I could not get the link. I ended up going to my PC laptop, opening the Excel file, copying the link into an email, and sending it to myself. I could then open the link on the iMac and move on. There's got to be a better way!

Other than Brushes, I have stuck with setting up my iPad with free apps, including:
Evernote
Dragon Dictation
Dropbox
Adobe Ideas
Google Earth
Kid Paint
Twitter - I was hoping for Tweetdeck, but it seems to be in development and not available right now. So I downloaded:
Hootsuite as my aggregator.

Monday I will visit Collegiate School in NYC and report on their iPads in the Lower School.

No comments:

Post a Comment