How can I get files onto my Mac?

I was having a conversation with a colleague on Friday who is keen to use iPads and or iPod Touches in class and has some excellent ideas for creating content but was concerned over the process for getting files off the IOS devices and onto a Computer. Of course, they could just sync the IOS devices with iTunes on a Mac or PC in the classroom but there are a couple of problems with this:

1. Each IOS device needs to set up to sync with the computer and you then can't change the computer you sync to (not easily anyway) without wiping the IOS device.

2. It may take some time to sync 15 or so devices and children get impatient.

The upshot of this is that I said I would look into this problem. Now I posted a while back about setting up Dropbox as a WebDAV folder on a Mac and this is one option. However, whilst I was setting up a new Mac with shared printing, I came across a feature in the Mac application Printopiathat I haven't noticed before (see post on printing from an iPad for details of Printopia). Printopia lets you print directly to either Dropbox (Printopia puts a folder into Dropbox) or to a Printopia folder on the Mac (if your not using Dropbox), the tutorial below shows you how to print a document to the Printopia folder within Dropbox. This folder can/could be made public so students and or teachers can access it and download files saved to it. I have only looked at doing this on a Mac so far, obviously you will need a Mac in your classroom/project box but if you like IOS devices, you probably like Macs as well and so have an excuse...

Using Printopia to send files to Dropbox:



Anyway, hope this is of use to someone.  why not leave a comment and let me know what you think of the site?


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