Free Apps for Teachers:

Friday, April 20, 2012

Socrative Tutorial

An overview of how to use the Socrative app to conduct quizzes and get student responses in your classroom.

Monday, April 16, 2012

In the last several months many schools have brought iPads into their classrooms. One of the biggest hurdles for students and teachers seems to be (at least for us) figuring out how to effectively share and organize documents. This post will detail what has worked for us, as well as what we tried first. Please note: This configuration is most useful in a 1to1 iPad situation. It is not practical for schools sharing iPads between multiple students.

If you just want to get to the meat, jump down now.

WHAT WE WERE LOOKING FOR IN A FILE MANAGEMENT SOLUTION

Wireless. We can’t sync every time we want to get something to students
Centralized Location. Emailing, sending from one app to another, posting a link on a website – all these options create multiple copies of the same document, making it easy for students to get confused and hard for teachers to track down student work.
Simple steps for teachers to send documents to students’ iPads.
Privacy. While we can build a culture of honesty and trust in our classrooms, a situation where students have access to other students’ work – to view, edit or delete – leaves gaping holes in the reliability of any system.
Multi-Teacher Access. We want portfolios of student work that pull from all subject areas. When working with middle school students in particular, this means multiple teachers must have access to each student’s portfolio.
Backup. If things do go wrong, we need to be able recover student or teacher work.
The ability for students to view, edit and share Word Docs and PDFs. On top of docs, our teachers scan or download a lot of pdfs and want students to edit/annotate them on their iPads and quickly send them back to the teacher.
Cheap. Free would be nice, but inexpensive is a must. There are plenty of business-class enterprise solutions out there, but they’re way out of our league.

WHAT WE TRIED (or thought about) FIRST, AND WHY WE MOVED ON

Email – At first this was our primary method of file transfer. We use Google Apps, so sending a file to a whole class is super easy once Groups are set up. Every student has an email account on their iPad, so sending files to teachers is easy as well. We also setup folders and filters in Gmail so emails from students would automatically be sorted into folders in teachers’ accounts. The problem, of course, is that files and emails are overflowing from all sides. Students open an email attachment in, say, Pages – now there are two copies. They export and email it from Pages back to the teacher, who then saves it to their computer – now there are four copies. If the teacher wants to send it back with feedback, the thing starts all over. We still use email with some apps that have no other viable way to export files, but all in all it made it very difficult to keep files organized.
Google Docs – If you’re using Google Apps, Google Docs is so close to being ideal. Sharing files and setting up folder and file permissions is a breeze, you get 25gbs per user, and you stay within the larger framework of Google Apps that you are likely using in other ways. We do use Google Docs on the iPads in certain situations, but there are three reasons we don’t use it as our primary means of file management. 1) As far as I can tell, there are no PDF annotation apps that truly sync to Google Docs. Some, like PDF Expert, will connect to Google Docs and save a local copy of a PDF – which you can then edit and copy back to Google Docs. But that’s a lot of steps and multiple copies of files, which creates too many chances for students’ work to get lost on its way back to the teacher. 2) There is no free way to sync folders on your computer to Google Docs. Syncplicity does this to an extent, but the free version is quite limited. That means teachers have to upload and manage student files through the web interface, which, to me, is asking too much. 3) Office2HD and other apps sync fully to Google Docs for editing office documents. It works quite well in fact. There is one small issue: when saving a file that has been shared with you (that you don’t own) Office2HD gives an error message, even though it does save the file correctly. If you have Google Apps, and you’re not worried about annotating PDFs, then Google Docs with Office2HD might be a great solution for you.
Edmodo – Edmodo is fantastic. We use it for student discussions, exit slips, quizzes, and now video sharing. It works great for assignments with documents if you’re using a computer, but it is tricky to download a document from the Edmodo app to an iPad, and impossible to upload a document from an iPad back to Edmodo. For this reason Edmodo is not a good solution for distributing and turning in documents. Just recently Edmodo enabled integration with Google Docs. Now you can post and edit Google Docs directly through Edmodo. However, I’m not sure that this solves the issue of turning in documents from an iPad. Please comment if you’re using Google Docs with Edmodo.
Box.net – Box has a lot features that out-do Dropbox - 5gb free, share folders within folders, share read-only folders, native email-to-folder, etc. However, there is no free way to sync folders on your computer. That feature only comes with a premium business plan. This means no drag and drop – you have to upload and download files through the web interface or through the iOS app. It’s a shame, but that makes Box too cumbersome for teachers to use consistently.
WebDav – You can setup a WebDav file server on a Mac. Many apps (Pages, etc.) will allow you to connect to the file server to retrieve and save files. We looked into this briefly, but felt that navigating the server was too complicated on an iPad. There also seemed to be a lot of limitations on folder permissions, and it requires saving copies of files rather than syncing directly. Admittedly, our experience with WebDav on a Mac is limited. You might find that it works for what you need. iDisk also used WebDav, but I’m not sure what iDisk’s status is now that iCloud is on the scene.
iTunes Syncing – Using iTunes to regularly sync files is extremely cumbersome. Also, we wanted students’ files to be edited in multiple classrooms and available to multiple teachers, which wouldn’t have worked with iTunes.
iCloud – iCloud is structured around a single user with multiple devices. Enabling file syncing in iCloud means that whatever is on one iPad is automatically pushed to all iPads that use that account. While there might be some classroom scenario where this could be useful, it doesn’t facilitate our needs. All students would have edit access to other students’ files, and there would be no way to organize files by student.
Pages, CloudOn, Quickoffice, PaperPort Notes, Type on PDF, etc. – All the other apps we tried that connect to DropBox do not actually sync. You can retrieve a copy of a file, edit it, and re-upload another copy (or replace). The problem with this, besides being complicated for students, is that it we now have two or three copies of the same file. This creates all sorts of opportunities for lost work and excuses. CloudOn does do a full sync with DropBox, but when we used it with a full classroom it often lost connection to its servers. It might work fine in the morning and then be useless in the afternoon, which lead us to believe that this was an issue with CloudOn’s servers and not our bandwidth.
SchoolELockers.com & ePals.com – These two companies offer file management for schools. SchoolELockers is brand new and has a iPad app already. ePals is more established and offers a wide range of services, but does not have full functionality with iPads yet. They’re worth a look, but not ready for primetime yet.

THE MEAT: WHAT’S WORKING FOR US NOW

Dropbox + PDF Expert + Office2HD

This combo meets all the points we were looking for. It’s a little weak on point 3, but not too bad.

Quick Setup Overview:
All students and teachers have a free Dropbox account. Each student has a folder for reading, math, etc. that is shared with their teachers. Only the student and their teachers have access to that their folder and documents. PDF Expert and Office2HD are setup to sync to each student’s folder. There is also a Class-wide folder that is shared with all students in a class and their teachers.

Overview of Usage Scenarios:

Students open Office2HD, navigate to their reading folder, create a new Word document, type a response to a prompt, and close the document. From their computer, the teacher looks in each student’s folder to view, grade, and type feedback to students’ responses. Students open documents in Office2HD to read feedback. No need for sending files back and forth. Students are prompted to push save when they close the document, which syncs the files to the teacher automatically.
The teacher copies a pdf file from the textbook resources cd and pastes it into each student’s science folder. Students open PDF Expert, navigate to their science folder, and open the pdf. They highlight text, draw a diagram by hand, and type short answers on the pdf. When they are done they close the document and hit the sync button. The teacher now has automatic access to all the edited pdfs.
The teacher records a mini-lesson video on their iPad and uploads it to the class-wide folder using the Dropbox app. Students open Dropbox, navigate to the class-wide folder, and stream the mini-lesson video on their iPads.

App Descriptions:

Dropbox is a file hosting service that allows you to access documents from multiple computers and devices. It is free in the iTunes App Store.
Office2HD is an editing suite that allows you to create and modify Word, Excel and PowerPoint files on an iPad. It is $7.99 in the iTunes App Store, or $3.99 through the Volume Purchasing store. Doc2HD is a version of the app that only edits Doc files. It’s cheaper - $5.99/$2.99 – so if you don’t need to work with Excel or PowerPoint it may be worth checking out.
PDF Expert is a pdf annotator which allows you to type, write, highlight and draw on pdf files. It is $9.99 in the iTunes App Store, or $4.99 through the Volume Purchasing store. GoodReader is another PDF annotator that fully syncs with DropBox. Its features are comparable to PDFExpert, and it is less expensive - $4.99/$2.49. We just liked the feel of PDF Expert better, but you may want to look into GoodReader.

Detailed Setup Steps:
Warning: The initial setup is not difficult, but will take some time. It took me about 7 hours to set up all of our 3rd-8th graders, but it’s been worth it. If you’re just setting up a classroom or two, you’ll get it done in less time.

Create a Dropbox account for every student with an iPad. Actually this didn’t take much time. Go to www.dropbox.com/register. Creating an account is quick – name, email address, password, check ‘Agree’ and submit. There’s no email confirmation. I already had a spreadsheet with students’ name, email address and password, so creating accounts was just a matter of copying and pasting. If you plan ahead, you can use referral pages when you register to get free extra storage for certain accounts. Educational email addresses get 500mb per referral, up to a max of 16gb (from the original free 2gb account). So you may want to refer from a few different accounts, especially if you’re registering more than 32 students.
Create student folders in a Dropbox account that you will use as the admin account. I used my account as the ‘admin’ account. This account will house all student folders and files. I copied my 6th graders’ names from my spreadsheet and pasted them into a txt document. Then I used a free Windows tool named NewFolderWizard.exe to quickly create a new folder for each student (there are Mac utilities that can do the same thing). Next I made five folders – Math, Music, Reading, Science, and Technology. I copied all five folders and pasted them consecutively into each student’s folder. Lastly, I dropped all the student folders into a folder named 6th Grade and dropped that folder into my Dropbox folder on my computer. I now have a uniquely named folder, with five sub-folders, for each 6th grade student. Repeat these steps for the rest of your grades and you’re good to go.
Share each student folder with the student and their teachers. Login to your Dropbox account. Let’s say you’re starting with 6th grade. Go into the 6th grade folder and right click on the first student. Choose ‘Invite to Folder.’ You want to paste the email address for the student and also for any teachers that should have access to that folder. Again, if you’re using a spreadsheet of students this won’t be too cumbersome. I had 4 teachers that I wanted to have access to the middle school students’ folders. So I copied and paste the student’s email first and then copied and pasted the 4 teacher email addresses from a separate txt file. Then send the invite. You’ll need to do this with each student. If you want a whole-class shared folder for 6th grade, share that with all students and teachers as well. This will make sharing things that students aren’t editing easier, like videos, because you can just drop it in one location for all students. Now, each of the invites needs to be approves. That means each student and teacher needs to log in to the Dropbox webpage and accept the shared folders. For primary students I actually logged in as each student myself to accept the shared folders.
Install Dropbox, Office2HD, and PDF Expert on student iPads.

Once the apps are installed, we need to set them up to sync to Dropbox. We had 5th-8th graders do this themselves, and I completed these steps for 2nd-4th graders. Start by logging in to the Dropbox app.
Next is PDF Expert. Open and go to the Network tab on the left. Tap the Add button at the top and choose Dropbox. Choose “Launch Dropbox app to authorize” so you don’t have to log in again. Tap “Allow.” Now, under “Favorite Servers” tap the Dropbox account. In the upper right-hand corner tap “Sync” and choose “Sync This Folder.” PDF Expert will sync your Dropbox files. When it finishes, go back to “Documents” in the upper left. Always have students open files from the Documents tab. If they accidently open files from the Network tab it will create a second copy.
Lastly, open Office2HD. I find it easier to navigate when the iPad is in landscape. When you open Office2HD it puts you into the Local Files folder. Push Back to get to the main folder. Tap Edit in the upper right, and then Add Service. Choose Dropbox, and enter your Dropbox email address and password. Tap Save, and then Done. Students can now navigate through their Dropbox folder and open, edit and save their files. We tell students that they should never have anything in their “Local Files” folder. If they do, they’ve made a mistake at some point and that file will not be available to their teacher. All documents should stay within the Dropbox folder to make sure the teacher has access and that there is only one version of the file.

Share files with students. On your teacher computer you can copy and paste files into each student’s folder. Do this if you want students to work from a Word doc that you’ve already formatted or annotate a PDF file. After doing this a few times, I can copy a file or folder and paste it into 25 students’ folders in under a minute. If you want to share a document or video with students quickly, copy it once to the 2nd folder that you shared with all students. This gives everyone access to the same folder – no need to paste it 25 times. Do this only with files that students will not be editing, and remember that students can delete those files too, so keep a backup.
Have students create or edit documents. If students are creating a document from within Office2HD or PDF Expert, make sure they navigate to the correct folder before they create it, and be sure to provide naming conventions for their files so that everyone can keep track of their files. If students are editing a document that already exists, they can just navigate to the correct folder and open it. Remember, we’re not using DropBox to get to these files, we navigate our folders from within Office2HD or PDF Expert. When finished, students push “Close” and then “Save” in Office2HD. In PDF Expert they will close the document and press “Update” in the lower left corner and then choose “Push Changes” to sync their work. Occasionally you may need to have students push Sync when they open PDF Expert in order to access recently added files.
Student and teachers can also upload photos and videos from their iPads to DropBox. This is particularly useful when students take a quick screencap of their work. Teachers and students can also create and share quick videos this way. To upload, go to the DropBox app and tap Uploads in the bottom menu. Tap the + in the upper right corner and choose the photos or videos you want to upload. Lastly, tap the bottom at the bottom to choose which folder to upload to, and then tap Upload in the upper right corner.
You now have a reliable and easy to use infrastructure for students and teachers to create, edit, and share Word docs, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, PDFs, videos, and images.

Drawbacks and Quirks:

Unfortunately DropBox counts shared folders against your overall account size. So, as a free 2gb user, when I connect a shared folder for each student, even though they each have their own account too, whatever files that are in their account also count towards my 2gb limit. We think 2gbs is fine for students, but teachers need additional space. We achieved this by using referral codes when creating student accounts. 28 students for each teacher gave us a total of 16gbs of space for teachers.
Office2HD has been stable for us when we’re just having students create and edit documents. When students have started moving files from folder to folder or deleting files we occasionally ran into errors in Office2HD. I showed students how to kill the app from the background, and that has always resolved any issues. One teacher had a Word document that was shutting down Office2HD when students opened it. I removed some formatting and it worked fine after that.
PDF Expert is stable and works well. The Network tab can be confusing at first because it also shows students’ folders and files. We had to reiterate a couple times to only access files from the Documents tab.
Teachers had to practice copying and pasting files into each student folder. Once they did it became quicker, and they saw the value created by this method.
It would be really nice to have read-only folders that could be shared with a whole class. But it’s not a deal-breaker.
The Dropbox app doesn’t display PDF annotations, so in order to view students’ edits to PDFs the teacher must open them in PDF Expert on the iPad or view them on a computer.
Time investment for setup. It would be nice if there was a way to accomplish this functionality without having to go through all the steps listed above. If anyone finds one, please let me know. For now, this has been worth the time for us. Since setting up these tools, teachers and students are using iPads with more confidence and success.

Monday, March 19, 2012

A few points of interest

1) Your Google Docs library (if you have one) is now connected to your Edmodo library. I'm curious to see if there's some way of using this to allow students to edit and turn in a document through Edmodo, using iPads. Please share if you use find a way to do that.

2) A couple free-for-today apps that seem decent:
Spelling Hero - http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/spelling-hero-custom-spelling/id458589126
Real Animals HD - http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/real-animals-hd/id445816960
And this new one that's always free: Scribble Press - http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/scribble-press/id487300076

3) Keep an eye on http://www.edmodo.com/platform for updates on the new Edmodo API that allows education companies to build apps for Edmodo.

4) If you haven't seen TED's education channel on YouTube, it looks promising - http://www.youtube.com/user/TEDEducation

5) Qwiki Creator (allows you to make your own Qwikis) is in alpha. Visit http://www.qwiki.com/creator to request an invite.

6) School eLockers (http://www.schoolelockers.com) released their app - http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/school-elockers/id506890883
Pretty promising way to share and manage files of all types on the iPad. Includes support for discussions about files.

7) Zac Picto - http://zacpicto.com - (not an iPad resource, but very cool), is a brand new, free, online substitute for Board Maker. Great resource for Autism teachers, from the maker of ZacBrowser.

Friday, February 17, 2012

Upload Videos to Edmodo from your iPad

Great Edmodo App update yesterday. Now you can add photos and videos directly from your iPad to your Edmodo library! Woohoo! So a teacher could record a mini-lesson on their iPad, upload it to their library, and attach it to a post for students to watch. So much better than trying to sync videos through iTunes. It doesn't exactly embed the videos into the post, but when you tap on the video name in the post the video starts streaming on the iPad. Images embed with a thumbnail. Good deal. I haven't tested it with a whole classroom yet, but here's hoping our bandwidth will hold up. 100mb limit on videos.

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

November 9th, 2011

PRIMARY:

Preschool - Counting

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id476908244

iReading HD - The Gurgling Pirate Ship

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id467982988

3RD - 8TH:

Calculator Easy HD

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id448246366

G3 Math

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id465009855

space math race HD

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id429875313

Ooops

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id467564672

Mental Case Flashcards HD

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id375753110

Universer Unit Converter Pro HD

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id458584668

SPECIAL ED:

Clown Dress-Up

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id467578969

Baby Eggs - Play & Learn

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id471466361

Little Solver - Preschool Logic Game

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id477622642

TEACHERS:

i.AM Search

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id459557470

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Updating to iOS5 with Multiple iPads Simultaneously

* Developed specifically for winners of the iPad RFPs in Chicago Public Schools

Introduction
By default, updating to iOS5 has to be done on one device at a time. Even if you are using a sync cart, iTunes won’t allow more than one iPad to be updating at a time. With the method below (assuming you have a sync cart) you will be able to update as many devices as you want simultaneously using Xcode. The only part that needs to be done one-by-one is restoring the settings from backup in iTunes, but that should be a relatively quick process. Then syncing apps back onto the iPads can be done simultaneously in iTunes.

Disclaimer
I’m not an expert. This is a guide through what worked for me. It is assumed that you are comfortable managing your iTunes library and syncing your iPads. Some of these steps, particularly in the Restoring from Backup phase, may be different for you depending on how you’ve setup your iPads and iTunes library. When it comes down to it, if something doesn’t seem right to you, don’t do it.

Preparation

Make sure you are using the Mac that you’ve been using to sync the iPads you’re working with, and that you are logged in to the same account on the Mac and Apple ID in iTunes that you use when you sync. In other words, whatever Mac you’ve been using to sync your 6^th graders’ iPads, use that same Mac to update the 6^th graders’ iPads. And so on.
Back-up all iPads in iTunes. This happens automatically when you sync, but if you want to be extra sure, right click on each device in iTunes and choose Back Up. This is an important step because the update process wipes the iPad completely so you will need the backup to restore each student’s files and settings.
Upgrade your Mac to OS X Lion (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id444303913). This process will not work without it (and will only work on a Mac for that matter).
Install Xcode 4.2, or upgrade if you have an earlier version (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id448457090).
Download the iPad2 or iPad1 iOS5.0.1 Firmware file and save it somewhere memorable on your Mac. If you’ve already downloaded it through iTunes, then you can copy and paste it from this directory ~/Library/iTunes/iPad Software Updates. Otherwise you can just download it using one of these links and save it to your Mac:

a. iPad 2: http://appldnld.apple.com/iPhone4/041-3310.20111109.Cfp76/iPad2,1_5.0.1_9A405_Restore.ipsw

b. iPad 1: http://appldnld.apple.com/iPhone4/041-3308.20111109.Fvgtr/iPad1,1_5.0.1_9A405_Restore.ipsw

Updating the Firmware

Plug in your iPads / sync cart. Shut down iTunes if it’s open. Open Xcode. You should be automatically taken to the Organizer window of Xcode when the iPads are plugged in.
Click on Software Images in the upper left panel. You may see the 5.0 software version listed there already. If not, locate the firmware file you downloaded and drag and drop it into this window. If you are updating both iPad 1s and iPad 2s, drag and drop both of the firmware files here. Xcode will choose the correct one when you update.
You should see all your devices listed on the left. Click on each one and push the “Use for Development” button in the main window. I got an unknown error for each device at this point, but pushing OK allowed me to continue without issues.
Once that process is complete, click on each device and click on the dropdown menu next to “Software Version” in the main panel. Change it from 4.3.x to 5.0 and click “Restore iPad.” Remember you should go through these steps with each iPad so they are updating at the same time. This is the real time saver.
Xcode will notify you when each update is complete. I had a couple devices that took a longer time to complete than the others. If you’ve renamed your iPads, don’t be alarmed when you see that they are all named iPad. The names will be restored when we restore our settings. In my case, each iPad was listed a second time on the left when it completed the update. This was confusing at first because I still saw the devices listed as “Waiting for Device.” Just look to make sure that the correct number of devices are listed as updated to iOS5 and then you’re safe to shut down Xcode.
If you are updating additional carts of iPads you'll want to clear out the first list of iPads from Xcode. Otherwise you will still see the first set listed when you go to update the second set. To clear out the list quickly, paste the following command into the Terminal Program and hit enter:

/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c 'delete :DVTSavediPhoneDevices' ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dt.Xcode.plist
Alternatively you can just remove each iPad from the list manually.

Restoring from Backup

Now open iTunes. You may be prompted to upgrade iTunes if you were using a newer version of iTunes than comes preinstalled in OS X Lion.
Click on the first iPad listed. The radio button should already be checked for “Restore from the backup of: …” For me the correct backup for each student was already selected. I know this because our iPads were named by student names. If your iPads all have the same name, but are assigned 1to1 for individual students, then you’re just going to have to have faith that the backup that iTunes selects is the correct backup for that iPad. Push Continue.
You may be prompted to enter the password if the backup was encrypted.
Once the restore is complete for the first device you can go on and restore the second device in the list.
The last step is to sync each device so that apps are transferred back onto it. Depending on your iTunes settings, devices may begin to auto-sync once the restore is complete and they restart. This can be happening in the background while you are restoring the rest of the devices from back up. If it doesn’t happen automatically then you’ll need to manually sync your devices to get the apps back onto them. As you know, this can be done simultaneously on multiple devices.

First Use and iCloud Settings
The next time you turn on your iPad you will be prompted with some settings options. They’re all pretty self explanatory. You’ll want to make some decisions about how you plan to use iCloud though. One of the prompts is to sign into iCloud with your Apple ID. Here are some scenarios for iCloud:

Each student has an iCould account. In this case you could enter those Apple IDs in now for each student.
All students using the same iCloud account to sync files and use Find My iPad. This doesn’t seem like a great idea to me since every file a student saved would get synced back to every other student’s iPad. Also, iCloud will only support up to 100 devices using the same ID for Find My iPad.
Each classroom has its own iCloud account and it is only used for Find My iPad, not for file sharing. This is the way our school is going for now. In this case you can add enter the iCloud credentials right away or tap Skip This Step to set it up later.

Be sure to look through the iCloud settings and decide which features you want enabled / disabled.

Setting up Wireless Syncing

You don’t need to change any settings on the iPad to enable syncing over wifi. As always, if you have restrictions set on the iPads to disable Installing and Deleting Apps you will not be able to sync until you disable the restrictions on each device. I was really hoping there would be a way to override this with iOS5, but I haven’t found a way to do this so far.
The settings you will need to change are in iTunes. With your iPads still plugged in via USB you’ll need to change a setting on each iPad. Toward the bottom of the Summary page under options check “Sync with this iPad over Wi-Fi.”
The last setting is in iTunes preferences under Devices. There is an option to “Prevent iPods, iPhones, and iPads from syncing automatically.” If this box is checked iTunes will not auto-sync wirelessly, it will just show the available iPads and wait for you to push the sync button. If this box is not checked, any time an iPad is plugged in to a power source, if the computer is on, it will begin syncing. We use this option as an on/off switch. I leave it set to prevent syncing. When I’m ready to sync and the carts and iPads are plugged in I uncheck this box, restart iTunes, and the iPads begin syncing automatically.
Another way to push Apps, Music and Books to your iPads is to enable Automatic Downloads. With this feature enabled any app that is purchased on any one iPad or computer will automatically be downloaded onto every other device that is logged in with the same Apple ID. This might be useful if you want to get new apps to your devices without completing a full sync. This process will happen even if your computer is not on. You need to enable automatic downloads both on the iPad (find the Store App under settings) and in iTunes (under Preferences -> Store).