Last weekend I took the opportunity to go and visit Dublin, the occasion was the final exhibition of my sons Art degree course. His final exhibit was a computer game which he produced on a Mac of course. I was able to play this game with one of those funny joystick things. I wasn’t very good at it because I haven’t used one of those things before, but I was still impressed with the game.

Procreate – make some drawings on the iPad

I was also able to introduce him to drawing on the iPad using the Procreate application. Procreate is my favourite drawing application for the iPad at the moment, although maybe it is joint first place with Art Studio. He is a caricature artist and I know of one or two other caricaturists that use the iPad for their work. Jack thought that the iPad was a pretty good tool for drawing with. Must get him to look at Pixelmator too.

Dublin backpackers Hostel

While I was in Dublin I stayed at a backpackers hostel in Temple Bar. The first night there was pretty dreadful in terms of ability to get to sleep. Temple Bar is a very noisy area and there were people coming in and out of the dormitory style room most of the night. The hostel did have some Wi-Fi and I was very pleased that I was able to use it to have a Skype conversation with home. I did get a little confused having to Skype applications on the iPad. One was the actual iPad version and the other was the version for the iPhone. I have now deleted the iPhone version from the iPad to make things a little bit more simple.

I took quite a few photos one in Dublin and also on a visit to Loughcrew Gardens in Co. Meath. My oldest son runs a outdoor education facility there and I had fun walking around the woods and flying down a zip line.

One of the features of LoughCrew in HDR glory

Hands on with a Canon 5D Mk3

Another highlight of the visit to Ireland was to get to have a Canon 5D Mark three camera in my hands. This is the camera belonging to my middle son who is a professional cameraman, hence the very expensive kit. The Canon 5 D has a very high quality feel to it, as you would expect with the price of it. I will have to continue to make do with my excellent Canon 600D for some time to come.

Although I missed being in front of my iMac, I found that the iPad is a perfect travel companion. At one point, I did find that I wished I had a later version with a camera in it so that I could get an image of a QR code and the information that was behind it.

pinterest.com/pin/2392544174… spondicious.com The last article was about Magic Lantern Software.

— David  Allen (@wizardgold) June 26, 2012

Roaming with the iPhone 3G

I did have my iPhone with me, my trusty old iPhone 3G. I was not able to use it an awful lot because I didn’t set up a roaming with my mobile phone network provider before I left. It was still handy to have with me, along with the extra fully charged battery pack that slots onto the back of it. This is despite the fact that so many applications these days do require that you also have an Internet connection. I really could do with upgrading the phone to the iPhone 4S, but the money is not going to allow that for quite a while. The first priority will be to get the new iPad. That is the trouble with being a geek these days, the cost of the gear leaves you with some conundrums as to which you need more urgently.

What? No password generator in 1Password for iPad

Password Crafter

This week I have wanted to set up a password while using the iPad. I have the 1 password application and I was surprised to find that there is no password generator within the iPad application. Within the desktop version of the software you can easily create passwords off sufficient length and complexity but there is nothing in the iPad version. I was quite surprised by this but fortunately I was able to find a free password generator called Password Crafter. With password crafter you can create passwords up to 25 characters long and you can choose to include uppercase lowercase, numbers and symbols.

Once you have chosen the length of the password you can also choose how many passwords you wanted to create. You can choose up to 25 passwords to be created. I usually only need only one password to be created at any one time. I will let it create 10 or 12 passwords and then I can choose one from the list. All you have to do is to tap on the password that you want and then tap on the copy button. Once you have your password on the clipboard you can manoeuvre to your application, probably Safari where you are creating an account that needs a username and password on some website or other.

Agilebits told me it was coming

The people at 1Password have said that they are going to include password generator in the iPad version. I have to say that I think it is unbelievable that it is not in there already.

Mac20Q Accounting applications

As you can see from previous posts this week I have been looking at Mac financial software. I have started by looking at the application called Cashculator which looks at your finances in a broad brush style. Cashculator is more about gaining overall control of your money so that you can see how much you need to save for something. It is also there so that you can see what your money is going to be like in the financial future with regards income and expenses. I also have MoneyWiz on the iPad and I will be doing a review of that one quite soon.

Back to work at the beach campsite

I now have two months of work at the campsite beside the beach. This is where I’m going to find some of the cash to buy the new iPad. Hopefully I will still be able to keep up with the articles for Mac 20 questions and the videos for the Wizardgold to YouTube channel.

A way to record a teaching thing on the iPad

I downloaded the app to my iPad because I saw that it is possible to record in a fashion on the iPad. I would like to record the screen properly as a video but I have to buy the later version of the ipad to do that. I need the iPad 2 or iPad 3. The app I am trying out is called Doodlecast Pro. I have just been working with it and I am not that impressed. I can’t use it to record what ever I want. I have to record things that I have put into the working area. It will not record other apps. I can only bring in still images, photos and screenshots.

Very limited in terms of capabilities

I can add new slides to the Doodlecast, but only to the end of the slide show. So I have to know exactly how it will pan out, as there is no way to add a slide in between slides already inserted. You would have to hope that the developers have got that in the plans for inclusion soon.

Recording videos

The way it works is that you put images into the working area and also you can draw on the screen. The drawing and writing will play back later. When you have all your media in and you know what you want to say, then you can press record. There is an arrow that you can move around the screen to point at stuff. You can overlay a colour and then rub it away to reveal the image underneath.

It would be nice if you could grab an object and change the size of it on the screen and record that action. I can do that sort of thing in ScreenFlow on the Mac and obviously this application has a long way to go yet. I suppose that the developer of the app has to get the app out there at some point, but it seems to me that this one could be better finished off.

Changing the look of the show or video in Doodlecast.

You can hit a button which will let you choose from a list of backgrounds. Simple things like lined paper or graph paper and you have a couple of sports based backgrounds. A football coach could use this app maybe to demonstrate what is needed from a set play, like a free kick or what he wants players to do with a corner kick. There are some settings for the brush but they seem very sparse indeed, especially when I come into it from a good drawing app like Procreate.

Recording on the iPad

Just press the record button at the top of the screen when ready to make the movie. You have to remember that the recording is paused during slide changes. In this first movie made with Doodlecast Pro by me, I should have stopped talking when I wanted to change slide. If you don’t then your voice is cut off by the automatic pause. There doesn’t seem to be a way to edit the audio you record after you have finished and no way to edit just a part of it either. You will be looking at re recording if you make any mistakes along the way. Most likely in a different application and probably on the Mac even though there are a couple of video apps for the iPad, Avid and iMovie.

You don’t get much in the way of editing tools. No layers and you can’t turn rotate items once you have them in the application. The app wasn’t that expensive to buy but at the same time it seems a little disappointing. I will make another video to see how it goes. Will also make sure that I use a better microphone with it too. I have the iRig microphone but not with me today, so I used the microphone from the earphones from my iPhone today.

 

Just lately I have been doing some drawing on the iPad while trying out a couple of different iPad drawing apps. So have been wondering what is the best drawing out for iPad. This came about following hearing people on Mac podcasts to him about drawing on iPad with an called Paper by 53. I downloaded it and compared it to an app I already had called Art Studio. In my reviews of these two drawing apps for the iPad I found that art studio was significantly better. I had to wonder why so many people were making a fuss about the app called Paper. I have to conclude that it was all coming from non-artists who were easily pleased.

iPad drawing app Procreate

Perhaps because drawing applications and drawing on iPad has been on my radar, I noticed another recommendation for a drawing application called Procreate. With a name like that you would think that it was all about sex and making babies, but it is actually a contender for the best drawing app for iPad. The artist that mentioned Procreate had been using it to design drawings which were being turned into a full body vinyl wrap for a fast Mercedes sports car. The design looks more like it was a vector style of drawing, so I was surprised to find that the Procreate drawing app iPad was such a painterly style of application.

Is Procreate the best drawing app for iPad

I have to say, that I am incredibly impressed after doing some drawing on the iPad using Procreate. You get a good clear space for drawing and the tools don’t get in the way. The application uses gestures you make with your fingers extensively for you to better control how you interact with the drawing application. When you do need to delve into the drawing tools, procreate seems surprisingly full featured. It is all very well for tools to be hidden, but they also need to be easily accessible. If you can’t get to the tools for drawing on the iPad quickly, then you are likely to get frustrated and annoyed. It is important to be able to change colour, change brush shape or style and also to be able to change tool as fast as possible.

Creative Drawing on iPad 2 and the new iPad

I’m still using the original iPad and I’m finding that this Procreate drawing application is still working very well. To be the best iPad drawing app, you need it to work quickly and efficiently. I certainly don’t feel that I am being held back creatively using this drawing app for iPad.

Procreate iPad drawing up of tools

When you tap on the Brush icon which is in the top right section of the screen you get to choose from a number of brush tools. You have sketching, inking, painting, airbrushing, textures and abstract, it is even possible to create your own customisable set of brushes. When you are creating yourself a new brush you can load a new shape from photos or from pro-library and you also choose a grain. With the grain you can choose textures which also have the brush works. You give your new brush a name and you can set size limits for the brush. Then you can set whether you want to see it in stamp view or brush view. It is all totally configurable and your brush you have created will be available in the brush tool, smudge tool and also the eraser tool. With all the changes that you can make to your brushes you have an infinite number of brushes available to paint with.

Working with layers in Procreate iPad drawing app

When you tap on the layers icon and select a layer you can immediately choose the opacity of that layer with a slider at the bottom. Then using the icons on the left side of the layers area you get the option to choose from six type of layer filters. You have normal, multiply, screen, add, lighten and exclusion. This will set out how that layer interacts with the layers below it. It is also very easy to change the order of the layers, by dragging and moving.

A drawing I did using ProCreate

Working with your images when you are drawing on the iPad

You can choose to rotate your image at the same time as you are zooming in or out. You can set the eyedropper delay. The eyedropper is a great way to change colour by tapping and holding on screen and then you can move your finger or stylus around until you see the colour that you want for your brush. You can insert a photo, flip your image horizontally or vertically. Then from the actions menu you can share the photo to Twitter sent to iTunes or sent to photos. I really like having the controls for the brush size and the opacity as sliders on the right of the screen.

Buy extra bits to enhance the iPad drawing up

If you go to the Procreate Artery section of the application you can choose extra stuff to use, such as charcoal’s, spray paints, pro-touchups and they are a very reasonable $.79 per extra tool. Even if you do decide to buy the extras, which you would probably only need for specialist circumstances, the application is still good value for the price of it. This is my verdict because of the fact that I have enjoyed using Procreate. It seems really easy to get caught quality work using the painting tools and drawing tools that the application offers. If you are looking for drawing apps for iPad, then you might find that for you personally, Procreate is the best drawing app for iPad. Have a look at the best photo editing applications too.

There has been much talk about an application for the iPad called Paper by 53. There are other apps that have a similar name and you have to be sure to look at that one, to see what I am talking about here. The chat has been coming from people that are non artists, but have have fallen in love with an app that will let them draw stuff. It has been mentioned on a number of Mac podcasts and seeing as I has a degree in Fine art and used to be a teacher of art, I felt I should get it and have a look. I wanted to cast a professional eye over it and give my opinion about the Paper app available for the iPad.

Trying out the free version of Paper by Fiftythree

Once I had the information about finding the correct version, I was able to get the app on the iPad really quickly. You only get one tool in the free version and I am not sure that is enough to give a good enough experience of the flavour of this app. The app is so simple that you don’t even get any options to alter the way that the one tool that you get works. I tried double tapping it and tapping and holding, but nothing at all. Very disappointing!

What is good about the Paper drawing application?

Well I suppose it is pretty. When you open the Paper by FiftyThree app it presents you with some sketch books and they look nice. You can scroll to the sketchbook you want to use and you can make new sketch books. There are some options for the look of the sketch book. It is possible to add an image to the outside of the book. Helps to differentiate between books that you have available to use. Or you can use one of 12 built in cover colours or images.

Tap on the sketchbook and it animates open and you can scroll through the pages until you get to the one you want. When your page opens ready for you to start drawing or sketching it spreads out in an animated way which is quite pleasing. Then all you have is a pen tool and an eraser. That’s it and to get anything else you have to pay with in app purchases. It is 79 € cents to buy tools separately or you can buy all for €5.99. If you do buy everything all you have will be five tools. For the price being asked, i think that it is not enough. There are other apps out there with much more to offer. We will compare this with Art Studio shortly.

Where are the colours in Paper by FiftyThree?

I tried tapping on ten colours to get to the full range, but nine colours is all you get. Very poor selection of colours. As you might guess, I am somewhat disappointed with Paper by FiftyThree. I have to wonder why so many people have tried it and recommended it. It really doesn’t have much functionality or usefulness. I checked out the write up for the app and they make a bid deal abut there not being any settings. All well and good but there is not much functionality that is hidden in the application either.

One neat trick that Paper has up its sleeve is the way that you can rewind. If you use two fingers on the screen like you were going to rotate something and you get a go back in time option. You can remove how ever much of your drawing that you want to. I did think I should be able to zoom in, but not so with the free version of the app.

Art Studio for iPad is a much better proposition for artists.

Let the non artists with little or no art skills use apps like Paper by 53 and for the proper creatives, we have apps like ArtStudio iPad to use. In ArtStudio you have layers, a complete and full colour choice. There are filters you can apply on a layer by layer basis. Art Studio gives you 25 brushes including pencils, brushes, eraser, smudge tool, bucket fill, glow, tube, airbrush and you can also do gradient fills. All of the tools have loads of settings that you can work with to give you unlimited creative options. You can change the opacity of a tool, the width or thickness of the tool. The brushes can have thin or thick ends and you even get lines which will change according to the speed with which you draw the line. Then you can alter the jitter, the shape of the brush and whether it fades as you draw. With all these options, it only makes sense that you can save customised brushes as favourites. This app on the iPad is nearly as good as Pixelmator is for the Mac.

Fully functioned drawing and painting app for the iPad

The first of the icons that you get to see the bottom of your screen is the one you use to choose the tool you want. You can also hold the icon down to get to extra option. The options for the chosen tool will appear. You will be able to choose exactly how you want the tool to behave while you are using it.

In ArtStudio you have colours by the bucket full

There is a colour swatch that appears by default And it is a much better starting point than what you get from Paper by 53. Hold down the icon for the colours and you can get any colour you want and also use an eye dropper to choose a colour from your image. It doesn’t get much better than that.

Put it all onto layers in ArtStudio

The third icon is for layers and again the is a wealth of choices. There is the option to choose how the layer interacts with the layers underneath. So you could have screen, overlay, multiply and a few others. This makes this app a photoshop for the iPad. It is also possible the transform the layer. So you can scale, move, flip and rotate the layer.

Next you have the icon to set up for the straight lines, rectangles, ellipses, polygons and if you want to have a line that is smoothed out or not. Or top of that you can get it to do symmetrical drawings on either a vertical or horizontal axis. Some very useful tools there.

While I was working on a test drawing, I wanted to get in closer to do some detail work on a part of my drawing. What I was very pleased to see, was that I had unlimited zoom, so I could get in very close to do what I needed to do. Excellent – Excellent to be able to get right in there to do the detail work.

Trying the tools in ArtStudio

Filter the results in ArtStudio

There is an icon then which is for choosing the eighteen filters available. There you can set a filter to deal with contrast, saturation which will be good for editing photos and then there are the filters for gaussian blur, sharpening, pixelation of the whole image, or you can add grain effect.

Have a look at Paper by FiftyThree vs ArtStudio for yourself and make up your own mind, there are lite versions of both apps available in the App Store. Get ArtStudio lite and Paper by FiftyThree which will cost you nothing and see which one you like the best.

 

Sending images to where I can put then in a Bog post

I run WordPress on all my blogs and mostly I am able to blog from my office at home using my iMac. Today though I am working at school teaching English in Banyoles and I have to write my blog posts using the iPad only. I could actually use some Windows computers in the staffroom, but I would really rather not.

So far I have written todays’ post for Mac20Q Blogathon using Byword on the iPad and it has been a good experience. I have the bluetooth keyboard from my iMac with me and even though I don’t mind typing on the iPad screen itself, this does work out more comfortable and faster. I do seem to lose the automatic spelling checking and word replacement by using the external keyboard. It is kind of swings and roundabouts with that one.

Getting the images uploaded to the internet

This is where I am struggling. I can’t get the pictures uploaded while in WordPress to my blog. I can get access to the media library I have there already, but I can’t get new images sent in. I get as far as the dialog box for it and then it all falls apart. I have thought about using a WordPress app that I have but that is not doing it either. I tried to send images to DropBox and then get the url. That looked like it was going to work, I got the url from DropBox but it was rejected by the WordPress image uploader.

Where is the FTP app when you need it?

What I need is an FTP application that will connect directly to the web hosting that I have and let me send images directly. I have one more to try on that. I looked at the possibility of sending the image to Flickr. I uploaded one image there but couldn’t find a url so that I could put into WordPress.

Getting a blog post published with Blogsy

The latest idea is to use the blogging software for the iPad called Blogsy. It looks very capable and what I am doing now is writing this using Byword so that I can write in Markdown. In Blogsy the page was expecting html code and although I could write that way, I would prefer to do it with Markdown. It is so much easier and less likely that I will make a mistake with the html code. I will see if I can upload and insert an image using Blogsy.

Blogsy connects with quite a few blogging platforms including LiveType, WordPress and of course Blogger. There have been a lot of changes to the app recently and I have to re set up all of the blogs from scratch. It is not too difficult and I have all the passwords for it in 1Password.

Missing the talking to my computer.

I could dictate using the Dragon Dictate app for the iPad but I doubt if it would work to well in a noisy staffroom. Talking to the computer in a quiet staffroom would also be annoying for the other teachers too. Besides the mobile application, while very good is not as accurate as the desktop version of Dragon Dictate. In the mobile version you have to have an internet connection and the voice recording must get sent off to be converted to editable text. I find that if I leave it too long until I edit it I have difficulty remembering exactly what I really did mean to say.

Yippee – I got the image uploading working with Blogsy

It took me a while to work it out, but I read a how to guide for Blogsy and discovered how to complete the task. I will have to make a little video to put on the Wizardgold YouTube Channel to show how it is done. I am starting to like the Blogsy Application now. I also discovered a WSYWYG view for entering text into Blogsy. I think I prefer the Markdown in Byword as it is constantly being saved into iCloud. Much better for back up purposes. I can also bring images into Blogsy blog posts from Picasa and Flickr. In fact, it looks like I can grab stuff from YouTube too.

Battery life of my iPad 1

I started the day with 100% and now at 3pm the iPad is down to 42%. I still have work for the iPad to do this afternoon so I am hoping it will last until after the last class of the day. I have my camera with me today so I might go into the playground of the school and record some video.

Mixel a social collage maker

It is a service that has a web page where you can make collages using your own images or the images you can collect from other users. You can also bring all those visual elements together then make something new and exciting. There is also an iPad application that you can use to have this sort of artistic fun and sharing is all part of the package.

Getting started with Mixel on the iPad

The first thing to do is to get yourself an account and connect up your Facebook and your Twitter accounts. Like I said, sharing is what Mixel is all about. next thing to do is to start making an image using bits and pieces of your own photos and images or see what other people have shared. What people seem to like to do is say something with the pictures. I was asked to join in with a Mixel recently that was basically a comparison between two images. One was some poor soul getting a full frontal lobotomy and a picture of a row of beer bottles. This all started with the silly saying – I would rather have a full bottle in front of me that a full frontal lobotomy. So the resulting images that other Mixel users came up with either joined in with the joke or did something all together different.

Getting creative with Mixel iPad App

At the top of the app you can choose from My Mixels, Updates and Popular. In the popular section you will see a few featured Mixel pictures and a bunch of other ones to choose from under that. In My Mixels you have the pictures you have posted and under that the re mixes that have been done. Your pictures will be either totally original or images that you have taken from other people and remixed yourself.

In the Updates section you will see all the updates from the people that you follow and you are also given the option to follow more people. Also in this area you can start a new picture, which is reasonable because you might well get inspiration from the Mixels you see on that page of the iPad application.

Making your first Mixel

you get an empty page and there is a bottom in the bottom right corner that invites you to click to start your image. You are then shown your options. You can get images from your Facebook account, from your iPad photo application, popular images on Mixel and you can do a web image search. I doubt if there is much a problem with copyrighted images as the use is completely artistic and most likely not for resale. Often by the time you have finished messing with the images they are pretty unrecognisable from the original anyway.

The image that you bring in has a red box around it and you can resize and rotate it, no problem at all. Then there are controls at he bottom of the screen to let you crop, flip, send to the front or the back and duplicate. You can have a bit of fun using this application. next thing to do is to hit the Add Image button in the bottom right of the screen again and bring in another object to work with. You are given random sets of images to grab also.

Manipulating pictures in Mixel

You can use the pinch gestures to change the size of the image object and use two fingers to rotate the picture to which ever orientation you want to put it into. It is simplicity itself to move it around the screen to create something marvellous. It would be nice in the Mixel iPad app to have a way to erase parts to give a soft edge, rather that have only the hard cut outs that you get from cropping.

As with all art it is all about making choices and decisions about what you put where. I really miss the chance to soften edges to get more of a smooth blend happening, but I suppose I could open up another app like Art Studio and save an image to the photo folder to use in Mixel.

Sharing your images

Once you click on Post you get a reminder to tell you that anyone can see your Mixel on the service and also use it as a whole or take the parts to use in other Mixel images. Once they are posted they can’t be deleted. When you get to that stage of the game you can also share your image on Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr.

Moving files on and off the iPad

Moving files on and off the iPad has for some people seemed to be one of things that is quite difficult. I honestly don’t know what people should think like that as I have been using DropBox to send files to the iPad and also to get files out of the iPad. I have also used GoodReader and also iTunes to get files on and off the iPad. So how hard is it to do an iPad transfer of data.

I have even tried a couple of movements of files to or from the iPad using WebDav. This is where the iPad gives you a url that looks like http://192.168.1.1:8800. I just made that one up, but it would look something like that. So on the Mac or on a Windows computer just the same you could put that url in the browser to see a list of files available to download to your computer. It has worked for me. Still it is easier to use iTunes though or DropBox. Now we also have iCloud which allows movement of files from one platform to another. It does kind of work in a different way though.

Despite there being these built in ways to transfer files to iPad or move files from the iPad, there are third party applications that have appeared that are made especially to do this task. I can’t help but wonder why. One such file transfer program that is for moving files is iExplorer HD and with a name like that it must be aimed at the Window users of the world. I have watched the videos that show me how to use it that are just video and no audio. I felt just as baffled after watching as before. Some audio in the tutorial video would help for learning how to transfer files from pc to iPad using this app. Same with iPad file transfer. There must be lots of people that want to know how to transfer files from pc to iPad.

Using iExplorer to move files on and of the iPad

What you get first of all is a hierarchical sort of view with a local disk and all there is in it is the tutorial folder. You then can add some cloud storage places. The first in the list is Windows servers and then you have the Cloud services. There are eleven cloud services that you can connect to. All of the usual suspects like DropBox, MobileMe, Skydrive, Box.net, Google docs and WebDAV servers. Handy I suppose to have plenty of places where you can get your stuff from. I just connected to DropBox to start with. You have to be happy with going up and down the file system file tree. You can make new folders and send files from this iExplorer HD application to other apps. I reckon that you could get used to this app and easily transfer files from iPad to PC. Or use it to transfer documents to iPad.

Making folders and files in iExplorer HD

In the local folder I created a folder easy enough and I was also able to create a text document. It was the only type of document I could create and to be able to do so, I had to tap on the edit button at the top of the list to get the options to do anything. Otherwise there is only a button below which gets you to help files. I thought that was a unusual use of the edit button. Normally that gets you to where to can select a pile of files and perhaps delete them. It took me a while to work out what I needed to do in this app.

After I had made the text file I was able to go into it and type in some text. I could also send the text to be opened in other applications. I think I would not be likely to do this activity with iExplorer HD as I have plenty of text apps on the iPad with better facilities.

Transfer files to iPad by Bluetooth with iExplorer

When you do select a file there is a menu that will let you make a copy, send by bluetooth, zip it up, you can even transfer by bluetooth or send out as an email. I did zip up a file and it worked well or I think so, I will find out more when I try to unzip it.
I tried a few things with this and it didn’t work when I wanted to have a file synchronised to the local folder. The dialog box that came up looked a bit weird too, so it looks like there a few rough edges to be cleared off this app.

There are few things that this application can do like moving files to the iPad via services like Dropbox but then I already have the DropBox app on the iPad. It could be useful if you wanted to connect up to a WebDAV server to transfer files to iPad. There were options for connecting to a LAN Windows server which I couldn’t try. Overall I can’t find a use for iExplorer on my iPad and I am not so keen on the way the buttons of the interface work. The button that gets you a menu should become available as soon as you select a file, but here you have to hit the Edit button first before the button you need becomes visible.

iPd Manual

What are your views on this application

You can read a few file types within the app, such as CHM, ePub, PDF and so on. It is also possible to play music and video without copying them to the device. So there is a fair amount of functionlaity in this file transfer program. I get the impression too that the developer is keen to improve the app as he is asking for users to email if they encounter any problems.

I would be interested to hear from other users of this application for connecting the iPad to other computers to know if you have a specific use case that makes it worth having or even indispensable. How do you transfer files to iPad , what works best for you?

Using iPads in education

In the Mac 20 Questions podcast, I have already spoken to a guy that was responsible for deploying 120 iPads within his school in Scotland. In that case the school had taken the forward-looking decision to use iPads for educational purposes. Fraser Spiers saw to it that all of the students in the school had an iPad to use of their own. Teachers sorted out what educational iPad apps should be used on the Apple tablet. It seems that the teachers needed to experiment to work out which were the best educational apps for iPad to use for their subject. Without a doubt, we are going to see a lot more of the iPad in education. I certainly wish that I had, had the opportunity of an iPad education.

Making it happen – iPads in education

Honestly, making sure that all of the students and teachers within a school had iPads would be a mammoth task. Even in a school that is fairly small. There is the problem of getting the powers that be to make the decision in the first place. Much of the decision will also revolve around the cost of implementing the iPad in education. Money has to be found, first of all to buy the hardware and then also, money has to be put to one side to fund the best educational iPad apps. There are also a number of schools in America that have managed to persuade the school district to let them have the iPad in the classroom. Here in Spain, Apple do not have a very good hold on the computer market in general. Despite the phenomenal interest in the iPad internationally, within Spain you are more likely to see cheap Windows computers being used. This is the case in the school in which I teach English.

The best iPad apps for education

Interactivity and a rich experience with a variety of media is what you would expect to see in the best iPad apps for education. Children have to learn an enormous amount of information, facts and figures, that have to be committed to memory. It seems a little bit of an anomaly in this computer information age, that’s the only way to test a child thinking abilities is to have lessons where they have to remember stuff and prove that they have remembered it in an exam or tests.

Wouldn’t it be better to have some way of testing the skills of creative thinking and showing initiative. Even though there are always changes being brought about within education, they come from within the education system itself. For this reason, many are changes that are at best tweaks, to what is already there. Will it be that the disruptive force of technology and the Internet will finally have a creative effect on education.

My own experience of iPads in education

In the school where I am teaching, my iPad is the only iPad in the school. There is one teacher in there that uses a Mac and all of the other poor souls have to rely on the crappy Windows interface. There are cheap laptop computers, one in each room that is locked away for the teachers use. It is connected to an overhead projector and I have used one to show video clips to the class. I haven’t looked in all of the classrooms, but I haven’t yet found one with one of those interactive electronic blackboards that you find in most, if not all English schools. I would love to be able to have a play with one of those latest pieces of educational technology. It would be nicer still, if I was able to connect a Mac or even better an iPad to the device.

iPads in education for the teacher

On account of the fact that I dislike using the Windows computers so much, I have made as much use of my iPad while teaching as possible. Yesterday in school I used my iPad to take the class register of attendance. For that I used the database application called Bento. This might not be one of the best iPad apps for education, but it certainly is very useful. There are Bento templates available that have been designed by teachers for use in education establishments.

Another use I have found for iPads in education is for the playing of audio clips. I have found that the volume is loud enough within a normal sized classroom for me to be able to play a section of audio to the class. This is much better than using a CD with the audio, as it is much easier to repeat a track and also to select within a track. To do this iPad education trick, I used the music application on the iPad. I had all the tracks from the CD ripped into an album, that I could get to quickly while in class.

Other uses for iPads in education

I have found that one of the best iPad apps for education is a plain note taking application. I used one of the notetaking applications that allows me to write and draw, either with a stylus or just with the finger. I find that pieces of paper always get lost, so having an iPad application that allows me to make quick written notes is very useful. When I have a small group of people in my class, I can write a word or two on the iPad screen to show them. What is also possible, with these iPad education apps is for me to send the note to my students as a PDF after the class is done and finished. This way they get a reminder of what we did in the classroom which helps them store the information into long-term memory. Of course I also use Evernote and Skitch everyday.

iPads in education is the future

It does look like Apple has the educational market fairly well sewn up with the iPad. This would be on account of the large number of educational apps for iPad, available for teachers and students. Teachers can create an iPad education for the classroom using the best iPad apps for education. How have you used the iPad for educational purposes? What about textbooks for the iPad? Do you expect to use iPads in Education? Leave a comment below, I am looking forward to hearing from you.

Notability on the iPad

I keep finding new way or new apps to take notes on the iPad and the latest app I have installed on the iPad is Notability. It is an app that you can use for handwritten notes as well as audio notes, typed text and drawings. You can save these notes out as PDF, RTF and its own format to a variety of places. These notes you make can go to Dropbox, WebDAV, iTunes, email, to print and to other apps you have on your iPad. it say it will send out to iDisk but I wonder if you need MobileMe for that and that is ending quite soon. A link up with iCloud would be handy. I wonder if that would make it the best note taking app for iPad.

Use with or without a stylus

I do own a stylus but on the day I was giving this a try I didn’t have the stylus with me. Even so, when I was using the pencil tool I found I could write well enough with the fingers.That says something good for the control that the application gives you over the pencil tool when you write or draw. There are options you get such as the width and colour of the line as well as there being two types of line. One is a single continuous thickness and there is the one that I prefer that varies the thickness and looks more natural. I got to the options for the tool by tapping and holding on the icon for the pencil tool. You can do your note taking strategies on this iPad note taking app without a stylus too.

Write me a river on the best note taking app for iPad

You can write directly on to the space that the app makes for you and the way the line flows is quite nice. There is no excessive smoothing nor do you get a jerky sort of line. I found that I was able to sign my signature easily using the finger and it looked quite like my normal signature. Then you have the ability to zoom in to write in a box at the bottom of the screen that put the scribble onto your page. You would use this if you wanted more control over the writing, especially if you want smaller text. The zoom box can be changed in size and moved around the screen to where you want the text. Then also when you are writing in the text box you can press a key which will move the box to the right if you want to continue the line of text. It will also move down if you want to start a new line. This works very well especially if you need smaller neater writing on the screen.

Typed notes in Notability

You can type notes in and I would do that because my handwriting looks like a drunken spider dropped into an ink pot and then crawled across the page. You can tap on the screen after choosing the tool and just start typing. Or you can make a text box that will confine the typed text into a specific rectangular area.

I just found out that you can make lists and you can indent them. You can have numbered lists and bulleted lists. I hit the tab key to make an indent, but there are controls at bottom left that will control that too.

Record audio notes to go with your visual notes

There are some note taking apps that have audio that will keep track of your audio and text notes to highlight the text at the correct point in the audio. Or they will play the audio when tap on a note on the screen. I don’ think that Notability gives this function to us but having audio is still good.

Exporting out of Notability

I sent a file out that had drawings, typed text and handwriting as a RTF document and it was only the typed text that survived the export. I was able to open up the RTF in MagicalPad and the lists I had created were there. The indented list had to be re indented.

Next I sent it out as a PDF and included everything with it including the audio. Strangely it made it into a zipped file and I had to open it up in WinZip, of all apps, so that I could get at the results. It did work though and I was able to send the document to iBooks as a PDF and read it. It worked well and then I was able to hear the audio. It goes out as separate documents and are no longer connected as it was in Notability. Not a big problem though. You can send out as a Notability file but I doubt if any other apps will read the resulting file.

What do I think of the Notability App on the iPad

There are features in this app that I like. It does a great job with recording you handwriting, but you will have to use a different app if you want have the writing converted into editable text. The app has wrist guard spaces so that you can write wit out messing it up, a nice touch there.

The way you have a number of pages that you can fill up ands scroll down through is good so that you will not be struggling with the space that is made available.Then you can add more pages if you like. You have easy scrolling through the pages using two fingers and there is the icon bottom right that will give you a set of thumbnails to use to navigate the document.

A place for your effective note taking strategies

All in all I think it is a good app with your basic tools of pencils for writing, an eraser tool and a cutting tool to move things around on the page. The eraser tool is a bit broad and will rub things out too easily sometimes but that is no problem when you have an undo key to use if needed. Of course there is also the text tol for typing notes in.

In the folders area where you start documents there is also the folder functions to help you organise your files and put them into folders if you wish. I would like to see integration with iCloud although that might not be necessary unless you can open up the Notability files on a sister app on the Mac OS or on your iPhone. You could open up the file on another iPad though I suppose and use the best note taking app for ipad.

Notability iPad – Another best note taking app for iPad

Good App – Go and buy it if you need the functionality it offers. You will be able to improve your note taking techniques. Effective note taking is possible with Notability iPad app. When you are looking for note taking apps for iPad, certainly put this one on your shortlist. Is this the best note taking app for iPad? One more thing – The price is right too. 99 cents, How about that then?