The Amazing Typewriter

This is a seriously silly app, that has no obvious value in education, and I recommend it. For iPad and iPhone.

But actually, The Amazing Type-writer ($A1.99) has sparked a multitude of very funny/smart cards in their public gallery.

It is the capacity to share things so readily that makes an idea like this work, and amuse, (and inform a new generation of kids what typewriters are).

Learning by explaining with ScreenChomp

I went looking for an on-screen whiteboard app after seeing the amazing Kahn Academy instructional videos. ScreenChomp by TechSmith (Camtasia etc) is an elegant minimalist free app for all ages. It takes just a few minutes to learn what it does, and an instructor or student can get to work drawing on the screen and recording a voice message to explain.

It is so easy to use that teachers and students can use it to explain and explore on-the-go, sending quick help videos to others. This is surely a very good way to demonstrate learning, and explain concepts.
One can quickly do a screen capture, then insert this image into ScreenChomp and use the pen and voice to create an explanation, pose questions or complete an exercise.

There is no registration for the online space, and presumably there is a limit on storage. I suspect that there will be a fee in a while for extra storage and other features.

At last, a decent iPad blog app: Blogsy!

At last, a respectable and good value ($A5.49) app for blogging. Blogging has been a real pain for iPad users, but it seems that the the solution is at hand. Just link Blogsy to your blogging site - Blogger, Wordpress, etc, and then some easy text editing, drag and drop images and video, utilising the polished touch controls of the iPad.

There is a twin view - the edit view (Write side) and formatting (Rich side) and the user swipes between them. Very cool. The edit page has complex looking HTML code on it but there is no need to apply these, just use this page to input text, then swipe over to the Rich site. There you select paragraphs, words etc and click a range of format buttons to achieve the layout you want.

Inserting an image is the test for me. From the 'Rich side', you click on the image icon and locate an image that has been saved, and drag and drop it onto the page, and simultaneously choose its format and size. Very simple. In writing the Isle of Tunes post using Blogsy, I did have some trouble getting the images to sit properly, but just loaded them again and they worked fine.

There are excellent How to Videos here and from the Settings on Blogsy. 

At last, the iPad is not embarrassed by its file management. Creating and inserting an image is now dead simple.

1. saved screen shot - press button and on/off together
2. Open image in camera roll and go to Edit to crop as required
3. return to Blogsy and in the rich side, click the images icon, find the camera roll and drag the image into an envelope and upload it.
4. back on the rich side, drag the image to where you want it left or right aligned. 

The image insertion is easier and more intuitive that most blog software, but the formatting of text is a little more complex. In summary, I think students would have no trouble using Blogsy for comprehensive blogging.

This 'Write side' view is where text input is done.

The media buttons link to whatever services you are signed up for for easy importing of images, video and so on.

A major update is expected soon.

[This annotated image is produced by Skitch, Mac App Store and Android]

An island of fun on the Isle of Tune

I am not sure exactly which curriculum objectives The Isle on Tune addresses, but I am sure it is fun finding out.

Isle of Tune is a musical sequencing and composition app that is a delight to use ($A2.99). I have seen a 5 year old compose with it and it will challenge the skill of a musical adult. As the screen shot shows, there is a graphic layout that presents the musical score as a road. The music comes from roadside objects, triggered by the cars passing by. It is programming, really, requiring lots of logic and concentration. And there is immediate delightful feedback.
Best to see what the process looks like in this frenetic video.


I would love to see what a teacher with musical knowledge could do with this app with students anywhere from Year 3 to 12. While a 5 year old can create on this, the video shows that in order to get a satisfying piece of music, you have to know about rhythm, complementary notes and all sorts of music knowledge that I don't have. But of course you could work out a lot of this by trial and error on the Isle of Tunes.

The fun aspect of apps like this is a non-trivial problem. Obviously students of all ages (and grown ups) would first of all want to just play around and see what funny sequences can be composed. There is a real danger that some students at least would have difficulty getting beyond a 'fooling around' use of the app. One wouldn't want to remove this element, but the teacher would want students to move on to learning how to manage rhythm and repetition and so on to produce truly engaging music. Obviously an anti-fun teacher would be challenged by this sort of software.

WritePad handwriting recognition app

I first published this on YouTube almost exactly a year ago and it has been viewed 33,000 times so far with  2,400 in the last month, so there is quite a lot of interest in handwriting recognition. WritePad is $A4.49 and really does work. It would be interesting to see how proficient some students can get with it over time.

A stylus can help this application, but they are about $30 and apart from high quality drawing, are not markedly better that a good old finger.

Best school utility apps for the iPad

First published just a year ago, Oct 2010, I still rank all of these highly.

• GoodReader - file management
• Quick Office - word processor, spreadsheet, file management (alternative to Pages and Numbers)
• iThought HD - mind mapping 
• PhotoGene - photo editing
• Dropbox - cloud based storage, on mobile and PCs too
• Evernote - cloud based notes, audio, images storage and management, on mobile and PCs too
• Pages - Apple's word processor
• Numbers - Apple's spreadsheet

Updates: 

• with iOS 5 and iPad 2, anything on the screen of an iPad can readily be projected (see Apple TV)
• The need for image editing is reduces with basic editing now available in Camera Roll
• with iCloud, there is less need for other online storage systems.

iPads and the business of reading

This was originally posted on Dec 1 2010 and is now somewhat out of date with the arrival of paywalls at the NY Times and News Limited in Australia. eBooks are already close to overtaking conventional books in sales in some market segments.


I am a news nut and so have been waiting eagerly for the arrival of the great ipad newspaper apps that make news worth paying for. The experience has been interesting.

In the beginning there was the New York Times with its standard web site. (All of the images are from an iPad.) A very good newspaper site. It looks a bit like a traditional newspaper, but each story has just a headline and a few sentences to provide an introduction. Lots of stories on one screen, and lots of small images and some video.

I like the way the home screen has a large number of stories on it, and there are also section headings, so you can scroll down the long home page and browse, or you can go to sections.
Then came the long anticipated iPad app and I find it boring, sterile and without much life at all. there are only a few images and an awful lot of text. There is a section menu that can be opened and the same material is there as on the original web site.

This is the front page of the Top Stories section, like a front page, but I find it dead. Maybe they are going to launch an attractive and interactive app early next year when they ask readers to start paying.

The Sydney Morning Herald has taken a very different approach, pending Fairfax's launch of its 'proper' iPad app. They charge 65 c a day for this version, and it is simply a page by page view of the print edition. It has been overwhelmingly condemned by the reviewers because it is not a real iPad app, with different layout, links and nifty navigation. I love it, and read it from front to middle every morning.

The iPad view is sufficient to read the headlines and some of the text, and to get a clear sense of what the main stories are, and how the editor has placed them regarding prominence. You get the result of a hundred years of experience in laying out a newspaper, and slightly less experience as a reader. To read a story in detail, simply pinch out on the page and you zoom in to normal size text. [right] The images look great. The experience is very similar to reading the paper version, but a little more convenient.

My next experience is of the Economist magazine which is an A4 size news magazine which looks very similar on the iPad. This has been my most satisfying experience of reading on the iPad. The view is very similar to the paper product but with the advantage of better navigation, illumination and clarity, and it is reproduced on one's iPhone almost as well. A major bonus is that the whole magazine is available in audio, so the reader can jump from reading to listening at the press of a button. This is particularly useful for iPhone users. It has proved surprisingly useful because it you read or listen depending on what you are doing. I prefer to read because i concentrate better, but if doing a menial chore, I can just keep 'reading'.

The cost difference is striking. An annual subscription to The Economist is $345 for 52 editions, but the iPad version is only $135, and it arrives three days earlier.













I don't think there is any doubt that eReaders are going to be as common as mobile phones in the near future. In fact, many of them will BE mobiles. But it is clearly going to be a difficult learning experience for publishers and readers to work out what format and presentation type suits them. The biggest surprise for me has been to discover the attractiveness of switching so easily from print to audio in one product. And I am a regular podcast listener, but it had not occurred to me that it is so appealing to switch back and forth. I expect there will be lots of surprises for all of us.

iPad in schools

This post was originally made on June 10 th 2010 and is rather quaint now that iPads are so widespread, just 16 months later. The video has had nearly 24,000 views on YouTube, and the graph of hits is virtually a straight line to the present, which is surprising. Maybe lots of teachers and leadership people are seriously looking at the iPad for classroom use?

It is early days to decide whether the iPad has a significant role in schools and education in general, but I think it will. It is quite a different type of computer and many will just focus on what the iPad cannot do, not giving due attention to the thing it does better.

I have only been bonding with my iPad for a little over a week and I think its huge advantage is immediacy. It is quite different from a laptop because it is immediately available to use. In schools this is very valuable. In two minutes a student can switch on her iPad, open email, read a message and jump off to a web site. This is pretty important in engaging the attention of 30 students. There is virtually no delay, and the size of the ipad and the touch interface all make it significantly more personal interaction. Even the size on a desk is important. There is room on a desk for the iPad and books. The touch screen is a much better collaborative interface than mouse control.

The most significant limitation of the iPad that I can see is the reliance on the on-screen keyboard. This is fine for web browsing and short text input, for me, but then I am a touch typist. I suspect that two finger typers will find it quite satisfactory. However, for longer input sessions a bluetooth keyboard is an option. A class may well manage with a group of these for students who prefer them.

One thing we can be sure of is that the range of apps available for similar tablet computers will expand very quickly, making an assessment of the value of these computers a continuing feast.