Overseas with an iPad (1)

I am Greg Hermann, a member of the Biology Department at Lewis & Clark College, and currently leading an overseas program in New Zealand.  I picked up the iPad about a week before heading overseas, so have done most of my work with it while abroad, which presents some unique challenges that I will discuss in the next couple blog postings. 

The major focus of my work with the iPad over the first few weeks of the program has been using it to help create and manage the program "digital journal" that the students have been creating.  You can see it at: http://library.lclark.edu/overseas/trip/6/  This is a project being put together in collaboration with Jeremy McWilliams, Digitial Services Coordinator at Watzek Library.  In short, students upload images  into their Flickr accounts, write short descriptions of the object being documented, link predefined tags to the image, tag the location of where the image was acquired (or verify that the correct GPS position was uploaded with the digital data), and submit for my approval to upload onto the site.  I have been adding images to the site using the FlickStackr app.  Images are uploaded to the Photostream on my Flickr account from iPhoto using a MacBook Pro.  I have not found an easy way to load/access images from the camera directly onto the iPad, which limits its usefulness at this steps in the process.  Once the images are part of my Photostream, the FlickStackr Ipad app nicely displays them and allows you to  title, annotate, and geotag (define the location) them.  I especially like the Location feature in which you use a Google map to zoom in on the location where the image was acquired and with a simple Set command drop a pin at the site of capture. 

Of course all of this works through WiFi access to the internet, which is not always easy to come by, even in a well developed country like New Zealand.  More on that in an upcoming blog post.