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Additional Caveats of a Shared iPad

Key takeaways:

  • After getting some things set up with the kids, I found a few additional caveats of note.
  • If the idea of this project is the help the kids learn about technology, they should be deeply involved in each step of the process and choice made.
  • The kids largely see technology as entertainment at their age, so navigating the "use cases" conversation has been complicated.
  • Tot Pocket is a low-overhead utility that jives with this experiment.

Since last week, I have worked with each of the kids to take steps in setting up their preferred information on the iPad. Each kid now has a background of choice, a generic focus mode (to be further clarified), and a shortcut for turning on that focus mode to "log into" the iPad. I also had each of them take an inventory of the apps they would like to see installed on the iPad, so that we could start building their individualized home screen.

Building the home screens is where we reached our first hurtle; the kids largely see technology as a way to entertain themselves, so most if not all of the apps they requested were to meet that goal: games, video apps, etc. I spent some time at dinner one night reading last week's post to them in the attempt to clarify how they should view this device:

  • Creative pursuits, such as coloring, drawing, photography, etc.
  • Learning about technology or researching topics of interest to them
  • Learning to code, interact with modern technology outside of the school setting, and problem solve
  • (And yes) Reading, entertainment, and/or general media consumption

The above is a loosely prioritized list. One of the biggest things that set this project off was the notion from my ten year old daughter that she wanted to engage with coding and digital art more. I want to be there as she dives deeply into these topics that have been so central to my professional identity.

[image coming soon]

In order to set up the Shortcuts, I had to set up their individual focus modes first, but not everything is set for those, so I will share about them at a later date. The image shows the preliminary shortcuts I created to get started; there are four in total, three for the kids (one shown) and one for a "restart" process (shown). These are likely to change, but the basics of the approach are there.

For each of the kids' shortcuts, the process is to turn on the focus mode (which includes a background and Home Screen of their choice), turn off silent mode (to enable game sounds mostly), "log" their start time in their individual Tot Pocket dot (more on that in a second), and start a 60 minute timer (for equality and accountability). In the reverse, running the "Restart" shortcut, turns the current focus mode off, turns silent mode back on, cancels the current timer, resets the Tot Pocket dot position, and goes to the Home Screen.

I intentionally am trying to set this up with paradigms from a standard computer setup. Logging into your account, using the computer, and logging out or restarting it when you are done. Some of this will need training, but the kids were in awe (this is why I am doing this) when pressing their chosen icon, labelled with their name, changed the look of the Home Screen and made it feel like theirs. I have these four Shortcuts in a "Profiles" folder that is surfaced in a widget on the general use iPad's home screen. The Restart shortcut is accessible from the dock.

An Aside About Tot Pocket

One of the things that I was struggling with last week was navigating the landscape of sharing inherently individual apps like Notes or Reminders. In the attempt to clarify the approach for an application like Notes, I distilled the problem down into use cases; define what the purpose of using a given application is, so that you can tackle the use case agnostic of app availability.

The use cases for a notes app are varied, but inherently simple because they are text-based:

  • Space to "hold" bits of information for short term storage, i.e. a backup for the clipboard.
  • Space for information the user is trying to save for later, e.g. lists, links, snippets of text.

And my requirements for such an app were:

  • Built-in support for Shortcuts to integrate into the "log-in" process.
  • Silent operations (the app doesn't have to be open in order to have actions taken in Shortcuts; this can also mean that is syncs and runs in the background).
  • Little to no design overhead that I would have to teach to the kids; I have enough that I will need to help them to understand without adding to that load.
  • Low maintenance with regard to file or history cruft that would require me to maintain it.
  • A tool that I am not already using heavily or for work, i.e. probably shouldn't be Apple Notes because I use it.

Last weekend, I was lucky enough to stumble onto the fact that Tot Pocket, an app from the wonderful team at The Iconfactory,1 was on sale and suited these use cases well. Add to that the fact that I have had my eye on Tot since the team first released it because of its novel design and simplicity in the note-taking, text processing space.

One of the things that sets Tot apart from others is the attention to detail when it comes to Shortcuts integration, as noted above. I will say too that I could have accomplished this in something like Notes but not silently. If the kids don't care to use this feature, they never have to think about it and I still get what I want out of it. I use a "dot" for each kid, for logging use times and giving the kids a place to keep notes for whatever they are working on. I also have a dot for general use by anyone, a dot as a simple scratchpad, and still have two dots for my use.

I also went back to Tot's website as a part of this aside and noted the following from Gruber's review in 2020 that I whole-heartedly agree with:

It’s just a great little utility. The limited scope of Tot reminds me of whiteboard space — expansive, but impermanent and set in size. For me it hearkens back to the classic Mac OS Note Pad desk accessory,1 which was limited to just eight sheets, and intended to run as a small window. Tot is a very modern take on that very old idea.

Slowly but surely, this device is shaping up to be something that I hope to be a learning experience for the kids as well as myself. I think the key factor for for me is they get to see me doing something that they don't see very often: problem solving with technology; because it is my day job, I do a lot to try not to bring it home. But if the idea of this project is the help the kids learn about technology, they should be deeply involved in each step of the process and choice made.

The next steps for this process are around better understanding the boundaries of my expectations: apps that will be most beneficial to the learning process (and being OK with things outside of those bounds), a set of items that I am hoping the kids will learn or discover in their time with the device (the start of a curriculum, really), and a platform that needs little to no maintenance from me so that I can join them in their discovery instead of being bogged down by the technology or its idiosyncrasies.

  1. As an aside to my aside, I love everything The Iconfactory has done over the many years of its existence, so I follow the work. There are only a few development shops that I follow in this way. ↩