I upgraded to my current computer around this time back in 2020. We were going online in teaching due to COVID and so I upgraded to what is essentially a gaming computer... built for speed in streaming and online tasks. We had to rapidly learn to use Microsoft Teams, ZOOM, Schoology, Seesaw, Class Dojo, Loom, Virtual Classroom, etc... We had to make video lessons that we'd post in several places accessible to students during our "free time". During the usual school hours, we'd hold classes on ZOOM or Teams, record these classes, and post these to Schoology so that students who missed class could see these there. Teachers were hearing crap from idiots suggesting that we were getting paid for just sitting at home and doing nothing during COVID when honestly, we were putting in more hours than ever. It was far easier when we finally got back into the actual classrooms in the following March. Most of the time when we were teaching online, I was working until 6 or 7 in the evening making videos and audios of lessons for students, and often I'd be taking phone calls or text messages well into the evening... even as late as 11 PM... from students or parents... trying to figure out how to submit a project digitally.
I got an iPad about 7 years ago or so with the idea that it would allow me to take a large array of images with me to the studio to use as references. I did use it for this purpose... and soon discovered so many other uses. I was able to play music that I had downloaded or stream music from Spotify eliminating the need to carry a stack of CDs to the studio. Of course, I use the iPad for almost all of my time spent on social media or looking up images for references., checking texts and email, doing banking, paying bills, etc... I could use the iPad for Creative Spark if I ever get around to saving my password for the site on the device... but honestly, I'm just a bit too lazy. Sites that don't have an app are more of a pain in the butt to use through the iPad so I can always access these on my computer or laptop.
Every picture taken with my iPhone is automatically copied to the iPad so I have all the family pictures with me at all times as well as records of all my paintings as they evolve. As the size of the pictures taken with the iPhone is quite large, I tend to transfer most of the pictures I take of students and student work over to my computer and then delete these from the iPhone and iPad.
Last year around this time I upgraded to an iPad Pro, picked up an Apple Pencil, upgraded to the 2TB of space on iCloud, and downloaded the Procreate app for creating digital imagery. I did all of this as I was taking a college art course as part of the requirements for renewing my teaching license. As the course was an independent study I was able to write what my proposed course of study would be... as long as this was OKed by the college and my school district. I proposed spending part of the time exploring digital art in order to be able to use this with my students who are ever more techno-savvy. Of course, most of their efforts with technology involve making TikTok videos of themselves dancing or playing video games.
