I enjoy working with students and believe that learning can be a fun activity. Today there are some interesting ways to introduce elements of fun in classroom activities using stand-along buzzer systems—wired and WiFi—but these can be very expensive and a bit bulky.
iAnnotate PDF is an excellent, full-featured app for marking-up or making notations on PDF files on your iPad. The app handles PDF files in such a way that you will feel as if you are working on your desktop or notebook computer. iAnnotate is well designed, provides a wide range of tools that can be arranged in a customizable manner, and is loaded with editing options.
The Sketch Pad program is a must for several reasons: it is very easy to use, has several features, and it is very nicely priced. All of the tools can be controlled from their home location at the bottom of the screen or be made to float and positioned anywhere they are convenient.
Users of Apple’s Keynote should be right at home working in Pages, at least in the way it displays documents, creates or opens new documents, the location of menu items, the way folders are created and deleted, etc. And for good reason; Pages is part of the Apple’s iWork suite, which includes Keynote for presentations, Pages for documents, and Numbers for spreadsheets.
Product Notes Plus (Viet Tran) Category Note Taking Overview A feature-rich note taking, handwriting, drawing, and voice memo app that you will find yourself using
Idea Sketch, as the name implies, is a way to capture ideas and organize them in some hierarchical manner — such as in a concept map or flow chart. Idea Sketch is a no frills app, rather intuitive, and best of all it is free! There is an upgrade option for $3.99 but if all I am going to get are a few more shapes, colors, and fonts, I am not sure that I would opt for a paid version. The free version, which works on the iPhone and iPad, includes a check spell option when typing but the app does not include a way to spell check the entire work when completed.
The first app up for review is Keynote, the little brother/sister to its full-blown sibling Keynote that runs on Macs and is similar in many respects to PowerPoint. Keep in mind that no app will ever run like the complete version you would use on a computer, this much you ought to know going into the iPad world of apps. That said, Keynote is easy to use and the Help section is very straight forward. In fact, you will be running your first presentation within minutes of purchasing Keynote!
