iPad apps for teachers

Grafio lite - beautiful and easy diagrams

Producing graphic images on a PC can sometimes feel like a hurdle. Sure Microsoft have introduced SmartArt whose predefined formats can be a blessing when they correspond to what you need but are a barrier the rest of the time.

Can I introduce you to Grafio, my favourite app for diagramming on the iPad - not forgetting of course that anything you draw on your iPad can be used on your computer in documents you are working on there. Grafio makes creating amazing looking diagrams both easy and fun - I love it! It's not just me either, I know one deputy head who loves Grafio so much that she uses it capture ideas during meetings and shares the resulting work as people leave the room.

Voice Record Pro

iPhones come with a built in audio recording app but the iPad doesn't for some reason. Garageband is a great tool for complex audio projects but if you want a basic audio capture tool there are lots of apps to choose from.

The one I am going to recommend to you was actually recommended to me by Valerie (again - Thanks, Valerie!). It's called Voice Record Pro and allows you to do most of the things you would want to do with an audio file, including:

Inkflow (Plus)

There are little apps that are nice to have on your iPad and Inkflow is one of them. This free app is a basic drawing app for iPhone and iPad that is great if you want to sketch, capture your signature and then easily send or share it (as jpg or pdf) or save it to your camera roll. The app is very straightforward to use and when you download it it has a file waiting inside the app for you which tells you how to use it.

Once you have drawn or written something you can move and resize your selection and zoom and pan around the canvas as needed.

Tellagami: A fun app for Friday

Tellagami is a fun app to play with. It lets you create characters (gamis) and place them on a background, which can be one of the built-in backgrounds or something from your camera roll. You can then make a 30 second recording like the one above. You can talk to your students from space, inside a cell or even chat through a formula!