Image via Wikipedia

While at the ACTEM10 conference last week while I was in the MacBook, iPod, iPad, Oh My! Mobile Learning with Apple session, the presenter who made a great presentation, made a statement that the more that I think about, the more I believe is true.I laughed at first when he discussed the toaster tech method to determine if a piece of equipment or software is easy enough to use and how if it is much more difficult than how they use a toaster that most people won’t use it.

Yet in both of the Apple presentations that I attended that used the iPad as a presentation tool, they had to use a document viewer to project the iPad’s screen-which did not impress me. This is a huge workaround and the clarity was not all that great or what I would have expected from Apple when they were showing off their product at a teacher’s Tech Conference. I was surprised and disappointed that they didn’t have a direct connection for the iPad to the LCD projector.

By not having the ability to connect the iPad directly to the LCD projector, it made me wonder how that work-around would work in my classroom and where I would find a document projector to use? Therefore, it really made me question why I would want or need an iPad in my classroom right now, when it would be more work than simply connecting it to my laptop. The “cool” factor can only go so far. I believe that Apple does make an adapter that allows the iPad to connect directly to a LCD projector, if they do why wasn’t that used to show off the iPad’s capabilities that much more?

I connect my laptop directly to the LCD projector and use it in almost every class I teach. Based on what I saw in these Apple presentations I wouldn’t want to use the workarounds that they were using to project iPad images to an audience. I now understand better that I want and expect to be able to use “toaster tech” when I am using technology in my classroom.

I am not putting down the presenters (they were both fantastic), just that the equipment they were provided to show us Apple’s iPad was complicated and didn’t put it in a favorable light to me as a teacher.

The reality is that I will eventually have an iPad in my toolbox, but not until I am sure that I can connect it directly to an LCD projector. Maybe I am over-reacting, but I was looking forward to learning more reasons to get the iPad and instead I found this and a few other reasons to wait a while longer.

Not that it matters all that much to Apple they are selling plenty of them without my purchase. But I don’t think that they meet the toaster-tech requirement for me yet.

Disclaimer: No one has paid or reimbursed me in anyway to write the above blog post.