Writing about iPad printing in a school that doesn't presently have this facility is asking for bother but I still think it is worth knowing about this app so here goes.
Although using mobile devices minimises the amount of printing we need to do, there are inevitably occasions when we either need or want to print from our iPads. Although currently in school we aren't printing from iPads, lots of us (staff and students) do print at home from our different devices.
Do you know what a web app is? A 'proper' web app can be made by iOS developers to appear like a normal application but it is actually running in a modified Safari window, i.e. you need to be connected to the internet for it to work, it is not self contained like a conventional app. GoogleDocs is an example of a web app that runs on any browser.
You can also create your own simple web apps on your devices for your own convenience. They are essentially shortcuts to important or frequently accessed websites. For example, I have one that takes me to the Met Office weather page. If you look on my device, it looks like an app but it is actually a web app: it requires a connected browser to work.
Most people are familiar with PDF files and part of the reason that they are so popular is because, reassuringly, files stay the way that the author intended. The font and layout and everything about the document do not get adulterated when they are opened on another computer in the way that other document formats can do. For that reason they are popular for CVs, contracts and similar documents. PDFs are also fairly compact files so they are convenient for downloading too. Anyone can create a simple PDF file from Word, Pages, Keynote etc on their computer or iPad. Lots of apps can read PDF files with Adobe's Acrobat Reader (for Mac, PC and iPad) being the one most people will have heard of.
One app that I find myself using semi regularly in my own studies is Text Grabber. I remember that when I mentioned this app in a talk two or three years ago, several teachers were interested and asked about it so I thought it might be worth including in this app blog.
Text Grabber is an OCR scanner which allow you to scan in and then export text. Using OCR (optical character recognition) the text you scan with your device's camera is actually read and behaves as though you had typed it in. Additionally it can also translate the text into any of forty languages. This is great if you are reading a menu on holiday and of course it has countless other uses too. Personally I use it most to import paragraphs from a book when I need the precise text for quoting or as a reference in an assignment and I appreciate not having to type the text in myself.
Do you ever wish that you had a flatbed scanner in your bag? Well, with scanning apps for iOS you almost have. I will be honest straight up and say that if you have an iPad 2, the camera is flatly not good enough to get the quality of images needed for these apps. Read on though because, should you ever find yourself with a device with a better camera, it is worth knowing about what they do.
If you want to capture a document or newspaper article you can take a conventional photo and this may be fine. If you use a scanning app, it still takes pictures using the device's camera but it does more than capture a snap:
Evernote just feels like it has been around forever so it probably has! It is one of those staple apps with a massive following. It's not a pretty app but it is definitely practical. Evernote is a supernote and organiser tool that works on (1) the web, (2) on PC/Mac desktop apps and (3) on mobile apps so basically you can get Evernote everywhere. Notes are stored in notebooks in the Evernote Cloud.
Until a couple of days ago, you needed a paid subscription to be able to create or edit documents using Word, PowerPoint and Excel on the iPad. Although the Microsoft iOS apps were free to download they weren't much use to anyone who didn't have an Office 365 subscription. These subscriptions don't come cheap (they start at £59.99 pa) so I imagine that the user base for the iOS apps was small.
Things may shift a little after updates to these apps last Thursday, 6th November 2014.