Evernote

This is perhaps one that fits the bill for an occasional productivity app. Evernote is Everyman's app. It stores images, web clippings, emails, and text and aptly syncs all of this content with desktops, laptops, cell phones, and any other sync-able devices. No more excuses for lost homework, students! This captures all! And if you're too sloth-like to take notes, simply use the iPad to capture an image of the notes and file neatly in a digital notebook.

But if I spend so much time organizing the objective stuff, I won't have as much time to engage in the subjective, like sketching a new journal in Papers or stuffing a new slideshow in Haiku Deck with inspirational quotes or  penning a new text to ePub on Stanza or ePub Bud...

That's the way of all digital devices. They are purchased for their fun yet contribute more to ones need to keep working

at all hours

much like I'm doing

right now.

Haiku Deck

While I'm on an artsy vein, I must mention the presentation potential of the Haiku Deck app. It could easily transform individual lines of poetry into iconic imagery, because the app selects a variety of images based on the words used on each slide. Once in the editor, you have the opportunity to select the word that will become the basis for the background image, which has a significant impact on what the visual contributes to the text. Its functions are intuitive, controls that any student could grasp and use to his/her advantage when interpreting a second level of meaning in a text.

Now, I'm beginning to wonder how to use the sharing functionality of so many of these apps. Are there privacy considerations I must address? Can they be collected on one site where students can create individual portfolios? Or should the products be sorted by app instead of student? That I have yet to discover.

For poetic inspiration...

...there's nothing like Papers. What a beautiful app! It creates lovely little journals of creative notes, texts, drawings, color swatches, impressions. I can see students using it to curate a collection of quotes and related experiences, to keep track of literary devices or vocabulary with associated imagery and examples.

Students more interested in keeping content in neat columns and rows may find the app less evocative, but for an artsy person like myself, I'm drawn to it's potential for illustration and poetry.

Stanza, an ebook reader

This  app works really well with the iPad and contains many familiar functions available on other ebook readers. There's a nighttime mode, an ability to search, increase or decrease font sizes, or share through other media like Facebook and Twitter.

One of its best features is its ability to create a simple ePub text. It's as simple as copying and pasting text from the clipboard and then exporting the text as an ePub-formatted document. Simply open it in iTunes.

Project Gutenburg

I've used this before to access texts, but what I know now is that the bulk of the thousands of available titles can be uploaded onto an iPad in ePub format. This presents many opportunities for students in our one-to-one classroom next year. They will be able to read any number of titles, highlight and annotate text, and share comments with others using appropriate ePub readers.

Project Gutenburg

Online eBook Publisher

In my search for free and useful apps for my classroom, I've discovered ePubBud.com, an online ebook creator that can be used to create picture or chapter books. The editing software is quite simple, which also means that it lacks many bells and whistles, but it's a very viable tool to use with students desiring to publish texts online.

Hop on!

This, from a water level perspective, is a beginner's foray onto a deep, dark pond, lightly afloat on a lily iPad. As I find my footing, I will develop dexterity and maintain balance in this watery world of apps and their applications in language arts. For if I fail, the iPad in my hands surely sinks, too.