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Back to school – some great apps to get you started

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With the new school year around the corner – here are some of my best picks for students starting with their own iOS devices in September.

 

CLASSES (£0.69)

One of the first things you will do on your first day back at school is transfer your timetable to your planner. Why not use this brilliant app to keep track of not only your timetable, but your exams, homework, deadlines, etc.

Info: http://www.dustlab.com/classes.htm

App: http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/classes-timetable/id335495816?mt=8

 

DROPBOX

Want an easy way to get files to and from school and home or just somewhere good to keep your work safely in the cloud (and for free?),  then Dropbox is for you. Grab it here: http://db.tt/OufAWFp

 

EVERNOTE

This app works on almost every platform, syncing across them all. Create a notebook for each subject, share that notebook with your teacher, with your classmates, use other Evernote apps too such as ‘Skitch’ to annotate photos, collated images and more which all feed through to your Evernote notebooks. You can add a web clipper too to your Safari which means from your Safari browser, when you find a site you like; you can take a chunk of text or an entire page, and add it straight to your Evernote notes. It’s great. It’s really powerful (it can even recognise text from photos which is then searchable!) and it’s free.

http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/evernote/id281796108?mt=8

 

CALCBOT (£1.49)

This is simply THE best calculator for iPad. Calcbot has a brilliant live as you type expression view shown in landscape mode on the iPad. Access advanced functions on the calculator by swiping across the numbers to reveal those features. Brilliant.

More info here: http://tapbots.com/software/calcbot/ipad/

Watch a demo video of Calcbot here: http://tapbots.net/videos/calcbot/demo/calcbot_iphone.m4v

 

EXPLAIN EVERYTHING (£1.99)

This app is a must have for any student (or teacher for that matter). This app enables you to rack up slide after slide, like you would in Keynote or PowerPoint; the great thing here is though, you can then annotate it in a live recording, with you speaking over the top of it – you can add elements to highlight key points, you can draw straight on, add arrows, circle objects and more. When you have finished, then all you have to do is share your finished work as a video file with export options to YouTube, Camera Roll, Vimeo, DropBox and many more. Not only that, if you have existing content you can import those and then talk over and ‘explain’ those things too, such as PowerPoint, PDF, Excel, Pages, Numbers, Keynote and much more. It is superb!

App here: http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/explain-everything/id431493086?mt=8

Info here: http://www.explaineverything.com/

 

EDMODO

It is very likely that if you are going to be in a school embracing handheld devices, be it iPad, Android or BYOD that your teachers are going to want to use Edmodo.

Edmodo is a social learning network for students and teachers. It works in a very similar way to Facebook but allows teachers to set and assess different types of work and it also allows students to submit their work too. If you haven’t come across it yet, it really is worth looking in to. It is free too and any forward thinking school is looking to it as a brilliant solution to tie together learning in an environment that students and staff are used to given its similarities to Facebook.

More info here: http://www.edmodo.com/

Management info here: http://blog.edmodo.com/

App here: http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/edmodo/id378352300?mt=8

 

BOOK CREATOR (£2.99)

This app is a fab alternative (and a bit cheaper too) to Pages. It has some fantastic features too. Not only can you export your finished document in PDF format (perfect for submitting work to your teacher) but you can also use it to create your own iBooks which you can then utilise in iBooks.

Definitely recommended, but… if you have Pages already, it is of limited use, unless of course you are looking to create your own books.

Info here: http://www.redjumper.net/bookcreator/

App here: http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/book-creator-for-ipad/id442378070?mt=8

 

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Create 360° records of learning in your classroom with @bubblepix

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Found this app today thanks to @joe_moretti - prospects look really good. It’s an app which works with a 3rd party device they call a Bubblescope. With this device, and the app, you can record 360° photos and videos in your classroom. Superb idea!

Follow here: @bubblepix

App here: http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/bubblepix/id478824625?ls=1&mt=8

I’m looking forward to having a proper play. Can think of some great ideas for use already.

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Cracking iPad video app for free – Pinnacle Studio

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Avid Studio (which cost £4.99) has been one of my secret weapon apps for some time as an alternative to the also fab iMovie.
Imagine my surprise when I saw this notification in my updates in the app store.

Avid Studio is now Pinnacle Studio and whilst essentially the same app, it is FREE for a limited period.

Grab yourself a copy while you can!

 

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It’s the small things…

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There are lots of great new features in the new iOS6 which can support teaching and learning but sometimes it's the small things which are great. I love the fact that they have now included a clock. A simple resource with a stopwatch and timer that you can put on your whiteboard to use as a resource in your lessons. Time activities, have countdowns for activities, there are lots of uses you can make from this simple addition to your iPad.

 

 

 

 

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One iPad in the classroom tips & ideas (from teacher & student perspective)

Top 7 iPad apps for PE (that aren’t PE apps) #CLVPETM

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I was lucky to be asked to talk at the recent Cramlington Learning Village PE specific TeachMeet about ideas to support teaching & learning in PE. To that end I made a presentation on different iPad apps that, whilst not specific PE apps, can be used to great effect to support learning in the subject.

Here’s my presentation:

These are the apps I talked about:

1) Board cam for live annotation on your camera feed, as it happens (which you can record too!) http://bit.ly/WDaHJ7

2) Noteshelf for live drawing over custom paper (also, a great note taking tool) http://bit.ly/WDaNjP

3) Map-o-meter for calculating distances on courses http://bit.ly/WDaSUy

4) Steinway metronome for circuit training / bleep http://bit.ly/WDaWUs

5) iF LED for HD for scoreboards etc http://bit.ly/WDb6es

6) iCabMobile for dloading PE clips 4 from YouTube for analysis http://bit.ly/WDbcCQ

7) For putting all workflows together, the iBook creation tool @bookcreatorapp http://bit.ly/WDbp9b

Thank you to David Paterson (@onet18975) for asking me to speak

The post Top 7 iPad apps for PE (that aren’t PE apps) #CLVPETM appeared first on Mark Anderson's Blog.

Tutorial and review: Book Creator app for student learning

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Below is a quick introductory tutorial in how you can use Book Creator app with students in the classroom.

What’s it good for?

Students showcasing:

  • Photos
  • Videos
  • Text
  • Audio

…including all the different elements of a project where they’ve curated those elements on their iPad.

Easy sharing of their completed book to their teachers too using the ‘Open in another app’ feature which ties in to:

  • iFiles
  • Schoology
  • Edmodo
  • Dropbox
  • Google Drive

…so that finished work can be easily shared with teachers.

Other benefits include the obvious ability to open their completed books in iBooks in order to facilitate later revision of the topic. Books created in Book Creator can also be opened back up in Book Creator for further editing / addition but also in Creative Book Builder for the same too.

Pros:

Book creator is exceedingly easy to use making it something particularly suitable for activities which require students to be able to focus on compiling elements of created work in to one location, i.e. their book

Cons:

It doesn’t have some of the extended features that Creative Book Builder does but it’s dead simple to use.

 

 

Related posts:

Creative Book Builder – ePub creator for iPad

 

The post Tutorial and review: Book Creator app for student learning appeared first on Mark Anderson's Blog.

What’s your favourite iPad app 4 Edu and why? Your thoughts please….

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With renewed faith in Wallwisher and it’s reinvigorated form ‘Padlet’ I’ve created one where I would like to curate your points of view and experiences in iPad apps for education.

What I am looking for is your favourite iPad app for education and why it is useful. I suspect I’ll end up with some repeats, but if you see Evernote or Dropbox a fair number of times already, could you add in another app or use that you find particularly beneficial to your practice or student learning in the classroom?

I’m hoping  this can be massive! Let’s see!

http://padlet.com/wall/hgwrd9sz6r

 

[wallwisher key='hgwrd9sz6r' width='100%' height='480']

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Unleash infographic creativity with Grafio

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It’s not often that I write a specific post on a specific app but I am today. I’ve been using the app ‘Grafio’ for some time now. I found it because I was looking for an app that I could use to create my own infographics (a diagram that plots information in an often stylish way as a graphical object – if you’re looking for some classy examples, check the amazing site www.informationisbeautiful.net – it’s amazing!) and this was the best recommendation I received.

So why am I writing about it? What is so good about it? Well for me, the first thing really that makes it so powerful is that everything you create within it, is vector. This means that the quality of the items put on to the page are lossless. You can scale up a vector image to whatever size you want without it pixelating. This means that you can make really classy pieces of work which can be also saved in to a vector format (in this case PDF) which can then be printed A4, A3, A2 etc. In fact, the app even gives you a canvas up to A2 in size to work with. It is an exceedingly powerful tool.

grafio

So what could you use it for? Well, it allows you to:

  • Draw and sketch freely
  • Communicate ideas
  • Make flowcharts (great for Computing & Maths & DT), graphs etc
  • Great for organisation charts (Business Studies / Economics)
  • Mindmaps, brainstorming ideas – learning tool
  • Taking notes
  • Record audio on each shape added to the graphic
  • Make a presentation
  • Create a design
  • Play with typography
  • Autoshape / smoothing from freehand shapes
  • Insert images from Camera roll (bear in mind these would not be vector)
  • Export as PDF, PNG or JPG or even export as a video showing the different stages of the process
  • Connectivity with dropbox and box.net

Want some examples of what you can do? Here’s some I made earlier, which, while small now will if you click on them grow quite large. In the vein of sharing too, I have embedded the classroom rules poster at the end of this blog post as a PDF so you can print that A2 should you so desire.

Classroom rules

QWC

SAMR

So, you might not believe me that Grafio is any good. That’s fine, but I’d urge you to give it a go. The proper full version is normally circa £5.99 (I paid £2.99 for it one weekend when they’d reduced the price) but to have a go with it, why not just get the Grafio Lite version and have a play around. It’s free, so the only thing that’s going to take a hit is your pleasure and unleashing some of your creativity. Grab the lite version here: https://itunes.apple.com/tr/app/grafio-lite-diagrams-ideas/id393111242?mt=8

The developers have also created some video tutorials to support your use of the app here: http://bit.ly/grafiovideo

It just leaves me to say, I hope you have some cracking fun using it I’d just ask if you do like it, use it already, that you share some of your creations with me? After all, information is beautiful!

Original image at top of post taken from Deviant Art.

Here is the downloadable PDF version of the Classroom rules poster:

Classroom rules

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A free app with wins for the teacher & wins for the student

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Moldiv-title

Moldiv – a free app with wins for the teacher & wins for the student

I don’t write about or recommend many apps but this is a free app with wins for the teacher & wins for the student. It’s really simple to use and has got some great features. It’s advertised as a picture collage app but really it is much more. It has some features too which you’d expect to find on paid apps such as Diptic.

Features

  • Import your own photo backgrounds (filters such as Sepia & HDR available)
  • Add text (lots of fonts & features here)
  • Add extra images (for example putting a QR code on your design)
  • Add multiple layouts (as per Diptic – see image below)
  • Export to high resolutions (2176×3264)
  • Add stamps to your design
  • Share to camera roll, popular Social Media and open in another app

Here you can see page 1 of many of the different page layouts available:

Page layouts

 

There is a tidy little tutorial on how to use it here too:

 

Uses for teachers

  • Make your own high quality posters
  • Collage photos from a school trip
  • Compile images of learning in your classroom
  • Show the required stages of a process
  • Create certificates for student of week/month etc
  • Create mugshot galleries of your department/class/team for display

Uses for students

  • Record stages of a process eg recipe, experiment, project etc
  • Make posters to show understanding of a topic
  • Record thoughts
  • Collage notes
  • Make memes
  • Make top trumps cards
  • Make revision cards

Where you can really get some further wins happening is where you take existing memes you might have created, for example in another great free app ‘Quipio

moldiv-quipio

Demonstration of how you can tie in work from Quipio in to Moldiv to develop your designs further

Rather than me go on, here are some examples of how I’ve used it so far:

Simple collage to show different points of view
Poster to show how you can include different images within the one design, i.e. the QR code addition.
Showing how a simple background with small text can be highly effective. Also showcasing the text background fade option.
A simple poster showing a great font and one of the free stamps
Showing the collage features and how text can be added across the whole design.
Showing the resize, change orientation and edit options in text editor view

 

Grab Moldiv here (for free).

The post A free app with wins for the teacher & wins for the student appeared first on Mark Anderson's Blog.

Math brain power with ‘Quick Math’

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I’ve always been a big fan of the Nintendo DS App “Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training”. In particular, the Math element of the game I found to be really good at getting my brain more responsive in terms of my general abilities related to mental arithmetic – being able to quickly recall my times tables, and other general sums.

Brain Training

Whilst on the #ADE2013 Institute, fellow ADE John Jones (@mrjonesict) put me on to an app called ‘Quick Math‘.

Choose your mode
Choose your level
Write your answers on screen

I think this app is great in the same way that Kawashima’s Brain Training is great too. If students follow the rules of Lemov’s ‘Practice Perfect’ and create automacity with their Math through practicing it with an app such as this, they are going to be more able to perform sums more automatically without having to think about it. It will free up the minds of our students to be more creative when performing calculations.

It’s worth a look see!

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Apple launch new iPad ‘Apps for Teachers’ section

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Further recognition of the massive adoption of iPad by so many schools around the world, Apple have just launched two new sections on their iPad App Store. One section is aimed at teachers and parents with apps for the children, broken down in to different age groups and learning activities. 

The other section is aimed at teachers in the classroom and apps they can use for their own teaching, also broken down in to different sections such as productivity, time savers, essentials, reference etc. There are certainly some great choices in there, some I hadn’t heard of, although some I thought that should have been in there aren’t such as Google Drive… No surprises there!

Either way it’s definitely worth a gander, even if for the free ones you won’t have heard of…..

The post Apple launch new iPad ‘Apps for Teachers’ section appeared first on Mark Anderson's Blog.

Shadow Puppet

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Imagine Explain Everything with a few less sharing options or annotation features and you’ve got Shadow Puppet. So why use it if you have EE?

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Well, it’s just the ease, simplicity and opportunity of just quickly being able to interact with images, record your voice and then share with others.

It’s free too!

Is it ‘better’ than the storyboard /annotation tools? No. Is it something I’d still use? Yes. And it’s proving a nice halfway house for those students & staff building their confidence to use apps such as Explain Everything.

Find Shadow Puppet here.

To make one, simply choose your images, hit record and speak, move through your images, stop recording and then share and/or save. It’s that easy.

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Are you using Shadow Puppet in your work or are your students? I’d love to hear your thoughts or experiences in the comments.

The post Shadow Puppet appeared first on Mark Anderson's Blog.

Quipio for iOS

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I really like Quipio. I may have even blogged about it before but it is super handy.

Check out what you can do….

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#AppSmashLive – a review and write up

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A few weeks ago I was talking with a few other educators on Twitter about App Smashing and ways in which iPad workflow could generate new levels of learning with iPads. It had come from a different conversation where thinking about the ways in which redefinition level learning could happen with technology and that App Smashing lends itself to SAMR.

App Smashing is:

A mashup of Apps in a workflow that combines the creation of different elements to a piece of work that generates a learning outcomes that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Having done a live ‘App off’ a few times with other educators, I thought a live App SmashSpeaking with a few educators on Twitter I thought a live App Smash would be pretty cool so I convened a live Google Hangout on Air with Michael Ha, Rachel Jones, Richard Wells, Joe Dale and Jenny Ashby.

You can view the live App Smash below:

More on SAMR here:

http://ictevangelist.com/beginners-guide-to-samr/

http://ictevangelist.com/technological-pedagogical-and-content-knowledge/

The post #AppSmashLive – a review and write up appeared first on Mark Anderson's Blog.


The periodic table of iPad Apps

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I was recently inspired by Sean Junkins’ (@sjunkins) periodic table of iPad Apps. I thought it was a really useful too – being able to map Apps to activities – I thought it a really helpful too. With that in mind, I wanted to be able to use it as a poster myself but whilst I thought it was great I didn’t however quite agree with some of the App choices. I wanted different categories too that related more to the use I thought would be useful in UK schools, hence I created my own version from scratch in Photoshop which I share below.

ICTEvangelist’s periodic table of iPad Apps (lo-res)

You can download a higher resolution version here.

The post The periodic table of iPad Apps appeared first on Mark Anderson's Blog.

How to use WordSwag for iOS

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Literacy is a big deal. One way that many teachers promote literacy in their classroom is through the use of technology to create good looking word resources to put on the wall. One such app that allows for this is ‘WordSwag’. Normally I would be looking for the free option however WordSwag is not. At £2.99 it’s quite pricey, however I do see this as being an app that would be useful for the teacher, not the class or the student.

To give you an idea of the sorts of things you can make with it, here are some I made earlier #bluepeter

IMG_4952 low access, high challenge IMG_5473 IMG_5472 IMG_4801 IMG_5096 IMG_5333 IMG_5070 IMG_4961 IMG_5402 IMG_5395 IMG_5287 IMG_5102 IMG_4830 IMG_5445 IMG_5439 IMG_5077 IMG_4805 IMG_5440 IMG_5360 IMG_4894 IMG_5441 IMG_5060 IMG_5359 IMG_5185

 

 

 

 

As you can see, the results look pretty swish! To help those who might be interested in grabbing the app and using it I thought I’d make a quick screencast on how to use it.

I am aware that a number of Tweeters are now using WordSwag to support their posts and tweets on Twitter, such as @TeacherToolkit. It’s proving rather popular!

IMG_5399

 

A big thanks to @clcsimon for introducing it to me in the first place.

Are you using WordSwag? Have you got some great classroom display designs to share?

The post How to use WordSwag for iOS appeared first on ICTEvangelist.

Tickle: Program Drones, Sphero, Arduino from this iPad App

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It’s been on my radar for some time now but I haven’t really had the opportunity to blog about it yet. Tickle, a free App for iPad works just like Scratch.

Screen Shot 2015-05-30 at 15.49.41

Image from the Tickle home page

 

Essentially, you can use the Tickle App to program a variety of different connected (via Bluetooth) devices. These range from Arduino Bean’s to Parrot Minidrones to Spheros and more. You can even program your home Philips Hue device using the Tickle App.

I don’t need to sing the virtues of Scratch or blog about it, so many have gone before me and so I write this knowing (hopefully!) that you will a) be aware of Scratch and b) its importance in the Computing curriculum space.

Given that Tickle works in the same way, you will already be familiar with the interface and using devices that you have, be able to create some pretty innovative and engaging programs with relative ease; you’ll just need some connected devices!

Alternatively, if you don’t have a connected device, then you can create your own programs that will run within the graphical user interface that comes with it. There are a number of examples that come with the App, such as ‘Flappy Batman’ and ‘Nyan Whale’ or ‘Swimming Orca’.

The interface is nice and clean and simple to use. For free, it’s definitely worth looking at!

Below are some screen grabs from the App for you to check out.

If you’re using Tickle, I would love to hear from you!

 

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The post Tickle: Program Drones, Sphero, Arduino from this iPad App appeared first on ICTEvangelist.

Starting a new term, why not look at @ClassDojo?

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If you know me you’ll probably know I am a big fan of ClassDojo and have been for many years now. It is a fantastic tool for home / school communication and for developing positive engagement within your classroom.

I am not going to spend time in this post extolling the virtues of the great app, I endorse it through my experience of the impact it can have on engagement with students I’ve taught.

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As we move in to this new academic year however I thought it a pertinent time to think again about using it. To help with this, they’ve recently launched their ‘idea board‘. A place where educators from all over the world share their ideas and top tips for using this fab little tool.

From ways to use the new ‘Class Story‘ feature to setting up groups to quick ways to improve transition times within lesson; the idea board is a great place to get new ideas on how you can use it.

To pad out this post a little too as I felt it was going to end up being a bit short, here are 5 tidy little ideas I’ve had or that others have shared with me that have worked in my classroom before.

  1. Why not try adding yourself as a student to the class so that students can award points to you?
  2. Why not, in addition to adding your own school values, add values that the students themselves feel are important and worth recognising with ClassDojo points?
  3. Why not have Dojo focus weeks by changing the point value in different weeks for different positive engagement values. This way you can have a real focus on specific engagement types that might either need focussing upon or simply ones that you want to cover to further embed the positive ethos for learning you are working towards in your classroom?
  4. Why not set up some groups using the new groups feature to facilitate quick and easy delivery of points and monitoring for groups that you work with within your class, e.g. a guided reading group.
  5. Join in with #dojochatEU that takes place every Wednesday night from 2030 on Twitter to share ideas or to ask for help with ClassDojo with other users. N.b. Most #dojochatEU chats don’t actually focus on the App but on other aspects of education. That said, the majority of participants are, like me, big fans of their work.

I hope you find this post useful and hope too that you find your way to using ClassDojo in your classroom this academic year.

 

The post Starting a new term, why not look at @ClassDojo? appeared first on ICTEvangelist.

Paper by 53 gets a facelift and now on iPhone

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I’ve been a fan of Paper by 53 for years. When I first got it, you had to pay for the extra tools, so I got them. Then they added in colour mix, so I bought that too. The design was simply so beautiful and it was so intuitive to use. I’m quite creative but my work never looks as good as much of the stuff out there, but I loved its simplicity and the fact that I could throw down ideas simply, elegantly and beautifully. Then earlier this year they launched the ‘Think Kit!’ element and simultaneously made the whole app completely free. Additionally they added the creative maelstrom that is ‘Mix’. A space where creatives can put their images to be remixed by others. Honestly, Paper is amazing (and let’s not mention Pencil given Apple Pencil has just been announced!).

My Ideas - 3

Today marks a bit of a landmark for the Paper 53 team. Not only have they completely revamped the interface. Gone are the journals and now we have spaces. There are so many features. Rather than write about each of them in turn, you can learn about them from the images below.

Before I move on to that however, I want to make the comment that in addition to adding photos, photo annotation, notes and much more to Paper, you can now use Paper on your iPhone. My goodness do I want to get my hand on a 6S Plus even more now or what!?

@FiftyThree I salute you. I love your ingenuity, creativity and your philanthropy too. Thank you!

Now on to the learning, which of course, should always really come first. No one would argue that note taking is an essential part of the learning process. When it comes to note taking using iPad, for me, Notability is the app to beat. Its beautiful design is second only to its functionality. Until now Paper by 53 whilst in a similar market, wasn’t really a competitor for Notability. Where Paper is better than Notability is in its creative elements. The tools you can use to create beautiful and stunning visualisations. Notability is more for functional note taking. With the new update however, Paper is moving itself in to an area which is more akin to the world of Notability. Should it continue in this direction? I think perhaps not. But for the meantime, I’m enjoying their creative ride. My advice would be to not lose that as its something that makes Paper so unique in its own field. Many argue that it would be great to have layers and other graphic design features. I would say no. Whilst these would be great features, they are not what Paper is about. If you want that kind of design tool then there are plenty out there to do that. Look at Adobe’s offer or Procreate or Forge. Fantastic tools, but Paper by 53 they are not, and vice versa.

Happy creating!

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