Now with added iPhone

There are at least two reasons to be thinking about iPhones when you investigate iPads. One is Keynote and the other is Scrabble.

Keynote is the Apple version of PowerPoint. It is certainly worth having on a personal iPad (for teachers at least) or will be when iOS 5 arrives in a short time. You may not have known there is a low cost "Keynote controller" app for the iPhone. Once installed, it will look for iPads (or Macs) on the same wireless network running Keynote, and provide an option to link to and control these. Linking is done via a four digit pin so that feels like adequate but not great security.

The iPhone can then show either current slide plus notes, or current and next slide side by side. Walk around, do your presentation, swipe on your iPad to progress slides. A colleague found it highly effective for a recent presentation.

Scrabble (the official version) has an even more appealing app. Scrabble on the iPad is quite nice, but when you do a multiplayer game, any player with an iPhone can download a free Scrabble Tile Rack app. This is just splendid, as it interacts with the game board on the iPad, and the tiles that are generated for your hand appear on your own iPhone, and then can be "flicked" onto the iPad game board!

What awaits to be developed by someone realising that a set of iPads could be used for things like...

• simultaneous collaborative work
• students rehearsing parts or revision with each other
• interactive games based on multiple iPads.

Andrew Lack