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Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Keeping Your Ipad Dry

With weather like this, if you take your Ipad out in the field, this item has been great (in my experience): the Overboard Waterproof Ipad Case ($36 on Amazon.com).  It's not a super-serious case, but it's really affordable.  We had our Ipad out on a College Outdoors birding trip to Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge this past weekend, and rain was pouring down. 

In the waterproof case, we could pass the Ipad around the group with an iBird app (Western Birds field guide, $4.99), and students could see close up photos of the birds we were seeing in the field, listen to their various songs or calls, look at ecological range maps, pick out identifying features (and see which species this bird could be confused with).  It added a lot to the field trip.

I also found that the Zaggkeys FLEX lightweight bluetooth keyboard ($64 on Amazon) is great for writing trip reports on the Ipad in a moving vehicle when I'm a passenger.  And, in general, for any purpose, the Zagg keyboard is far superior to the one on the Ipad.  The best thing about this Zagg keyboard is:  it fully charges in less than an hour, and holds that charge for a month!

I had hoped to develop a College Outdoors Ipad photo gallery of common Pacific Northwest mushroom species earlier in November, but this was not the best year for a big fruiting of various mushroom species.  Our three field trips on weekends this November didn't find the diversity of (or quality of-  i.e., fresh) mushrooms that we've found in November 3 or 4 years ago.  So, we have a few good photos so far, but this continues to be a work in progress.  Too bad no one else has developed a Pacific NW Mushroom App yet!

Joe Yuska


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