How To Connect An iPad To A Smartboard

How Can You Connect An iPad To A Smartboard?

It’s really simple–so simple that you’re going to feel silly for not having already known this–and if you tweet this out to a colleague without checking out the stunning simplicity of it all, you’re going to feel crunchy (remember that term?) later when you realize it wasn’t quite the revelation you’d thought it might be.

Context

If you’ve only got one iPad, or are trying to guide the entire class through an activity, the classroom projector can act as a modeling tool for students to follow along.

By displaying the iPad on the projector, you’ve got an easy way to broadcast your screen–or a student’s screen during a presentation–to the entire class.

What You Need

  • iPad 2 or “new iPad” (thank goodness Apple didn’t call the new iPad iPad 3–that’d just be confusing!)
  • Apple VGA Adapter
Process

To use the Smartboard as a projection display, you only need an Apple VGA adapter, the same style you’d use for other gadgets including monitors. By joining the iPad and Smartboard cable with the adapter, the iPad should display on when the projector and iPad are on.

Sorry it wasn’t more intricate or secretive than that. Plug it in and turn it on. Same will work with HDMI cables and HDTVs as well with the right adapters.

If you’re more of a visual learner, check out the video below, which brings up the interesting suggestion of whole-class reads via the projector, which would not be great for novels, but for poems or picture books would work swimmingly, we’d think.

YouTube video