Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Puffin Browser for iOS = Music Teacher DREAM!!!

HOLD THE PRESSES, my friends!   This is BIG NEWS.

I am thankful that my Rover app (browser designed to handle flash websites) wasn't working, even after deleting and re-installing it.  Because if this had not happened, I would never have searched for another alternative.

But -- I did search. And I found:


The Puffin Browser

I loaded it, wondering if the bold claims it was making could be true.
I went to the Noteflight website, and was able to use the FULL site, not just the mobile version.  Some of the capabilities were off because of not having a mouse to click, and that sort of thing, but the actual site? It worked just fine.

It occurred to me that perhaps the wonderful MusicTheory.Net site might work.  (Because let's face it -- none of use can afford a $3.99 app per student to be able to use all of the features on the iPad.)   So, I opened up the Puffin browser, and typed in http://www.musictheory.net, and for less than one second that familiar, heart-breaking red box that signifies a flash issues appeared....  but then it was gone, replace instead by a beautiful five line staff, and the rest of the tutorial.

I even gave myself a test of intervals, which I rushed through too quickly and called a minor 6th a major 6th (because it sounded too happy to be minor), and I was even more grateful that such an incredible resource will not be lost to us if the MLTI  (Maine Learning Technology Initiative) decides to choose iPads for next school year.

Woo-hoo!!  Anyone else feel like celebrating?


**** Update ---  The day after posting this I realized that the Puffin free browser is a 14 day trial of the flash capable browser.  There are options (referring friends) to continue using the capabilities for an additional 4 weeks, or the full version of the update is only $2.99.   For complete access to ANY flash based site, that seems very reasonable.  I have checked with my science colleagues and tested many of the sites that they use on the laptops and all of the FLASH based sites did work.   Shockwave based programs will not work with Puffin.

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