iPad Basics

Keynote and PowerPoint are both presentations creating applications. They both offer basic features, such as adding new slide, choosing different slide layouts, adding Shapes, Table, Charts, Animations, transitions and so on to meet the users basic needs. They both carry a lot of theme choices for business, wedding and so much more to meet different users’ needs. One of the differences between Keynote and PowerPoint is that Keynote offers the Share button to allow users to share the presentations with others, while PowerPoint doesn’t have this feature.  Keynote features a wide array of templates and transition effects.

I have used Keynote on the iMac; however, this is my first time to try the Keynote on the iPad. Because its multi-touch technology, it feels so different than using Keynote on the Mac. Keynote on the iPad offers a lot of simpler features but enough to make good presentation. The animation effect of Keynote on iPad really amazes me. I can create sophisticated animations using the same objects on two slides; change the position, size, rotation or opacity of the objects; when I finish presenting, I only need to simply pinch anywhere on the slide. I can also tap the tools button and choose Share and Print, and then I will be able to email my presentation or copy it or iTunes on my Mac, in Keynote, PDF or PowerPoint format. At last, I can use iCloud to store my presentations and keep them up to date across my iPad, iPod. Any new presentations or changes I make will automatically appear on my other iOS devices.

iBooks and Kindle app both are free and each is linked to its own dedicated store. There is a significant difference between the two apps. Amazon’s selection of books is far more than Apple’s. Both can be customized and modified the text to suit my needs. Like the Kindle app, iBooks offers its own brightness slider. The two apps take strikingly different approaches to design. iBooks attempts to recreate the feeling of a real book, while Kindle skips details, and just shows the text starkly bare. The Kindle app displays what percentage of the book I’ve read and the actual page numbers. By contrast, the page number on iBooks will change entirely if I switch to a larger font. But iBooks has a tiny line of text that indicates how many pages left in the chapter I am reading, which is a wonderful way to see how close I are to a good stopping point. Since both apps are available on iPad, I have both of them. I cannot only download free books from both iBooks’ store and Amazon but also find the cheaper deal out of the two.

Rover is the browser especially designed for education on iPad. Some educational games require Flash enabled browser. Because iPad cannot open Flash content, in order to browse content with Flash, users have to use Flash-enabled browser. Rover does allow me to access Flash content, however, gestures don’t work well and lag causes delays and problems for interactive sites. It does not support other common web plugins like Unity and it takes tons of bandwidth, if whole class uses it at the same time, it might significantly slow down the Internet speed. The Safari is an Apple designed browser to allow users to browse the Internet. It does not support Flash content. Personally, I prefer using Safari because it does not take as much bandwidth as Rover and can access to the Internet faster. I would like to keep the Rover just in case I need it to access some Flash contents.
           I have registered an Box account and upload some pictures and files to my account. Box can be a great cloud storage. There are Box for iPad, iPhone, Android and more. I can view, manage, and share all of my files while I am on the go using Box from my computers and mobile devices. I can also import my contacts from my email account and collaborate with people on Box. Box does not only offer a great cloud storage, but also provides a platform for collaboration. By adding collaborators on Box, I can send them email, message to collaborate tasks.