iAnnotate: turning data into (annotated) information

I have been gleefully showing folk how useful Dropbox is, but truth to tell I have been worrying about handling PDFs. Not only do I get quite a few I need to handle for school, but I am doing some study and want more than Dropbox offers. Just taking them over to iBooks doesn't do: its a very basic reader.

I tried iAnnotate and so far I am very impressed. Your first discovery will be that you can add almost any type of annotation to a PDF... highlight text, add notes in a callout, scribble on the page, or add a short verbal message. This all works in a tidy interface with maximum space for the PDF with easily navigated flyout menus on the side.

Today I discovered some new (for me) features... such as a full file and folder system! You can create your own folders and sub folders, and move documents between folders (or duplicate them) smoothly and graphically with touch gestures. By contrast the "folder" system in iBooks is very clunky.

I was then wondering about working with a bibliography in one document I had... selected the title of an article and found some helpful options coming up: copy (of course) but also Dictionary, Wikipedia and Google. When you select any of these iAnnotate loads its own browser, so you are not diving in and out of the main app. If you find an article in the browser you like, there is a button that allows you to save the web page as a pdf which of course is placed in iAnnotate for you.

In the school context this would be a lovely app to use for a BYOD school or where iPads have been given to individual students. It makes less sense if the iPads are communal, though I suppose students could work on annotating an article then forwarding it to themselves.

As a teacher tool it is just spectacular: you can create a whole range of annotations for a pdf, and then send the annotated pdf to a normal computer. As the product is actually using features built in to the Adobe pdf definition, all the annotations will appear in "Reader" or "Acrobat". Don't try viewing this using Safari on the iPad though, it has limited support for pdfs built in, and the annotations won't show. This is hardly a problem: just get iAnnotate!

You can use drop box, syncing or email to move things in and out, and can also pick up pdfs directly from the web. Even more impressive, you can establish a connection directly to the web part of Dropbox and directly read and import PDFs from there.

A fully realised and thought through package that is going to make my life much, much easier.

Andrew Lack

Notion: real notation editing

I am so impressed with Notion for iPad. It is not hard to find music apps for the iPad (synths, recorders and the like) but this is the first music notation editor I have found and its a fine piece of coding.

The initial cost is fairly low, and for this you get the full editor and a sub set of instruments. Rather than being oriented around a rock band, this app has a full range of orchestral instruments and sections, as well as additional guitars and keyboards. If you want the full range of instruments you have to pay per instruments (there is bulk pricing as well).

You select compose, and initially you have to indicate the instruments you are writing for. Rather than a boring text list you select from a menu of labelled pictures. When you are ready the blank score opens. Data entry is via a combination of piano keyboard or guitar fretboard and some slim horizontal menus with fly outs.

Ultimately the iPad screen is very small for work like this, but the app works well and smoothly. Select a crotchet, hit C on the keyboard, and a C is placed on the stave you are working on. You can use a system where the cursor skips forward to the next logical spot (fine for solo lines) or you can stack up notes in a chord and move forward manually.

It would be unrealistic to expect the power of, say, Sibelius, nevertheless this has articulation, percussion notation, guitar tablature, and full range of note lengths and of course all the key signatures and time signatures you could wish. When you are ready you can play back. Sounds are quite pleasant and as far as I can work out are sampled rather than based on any internal synth. Strings are not bad and other instruments adequate to good.

This is not an app for a keen musician who knows no music. All data entry has to be done by notation entry. There is no option to "play in" a piece. Impressively there is an option to read a MIDI score though I had mixed results with this. There are sample scores provided that sound rather good.

In the school context this is a potential tool for learning notation, basic editing and input, and score study (though again the screen is fairly small for this). Compositions can be downloaded from the iPhone in native format, as PDFs or as MIDI files. There are some video tutorials, and a simple "manual" though I was left wanting a bit more detail.

Worth a look... even if only on a teacher's iPad!

Andrew Lack

Garage Band... the missing link

Garage Band on the iPad is really quite spectacular, and certainly a shining example of what the iPad can be used for. I have talked a bit about Garage Band before, but as usual the trick is working out how to move files in the school context. Turns out it is not too much of a problem, though it does mean each student's song file will have to be moved by a teacher (I imagine) one at a time, so this is not ideal.

I thought I knew how to do this... but I was wrong. I was missing a whole extra step that Apple have thrown in. Lets get started!

1) Create your song on the iPad. This will stay on the iPad until someone deletes it, so you can keep on editing the parts or adding new parts.
2) You can see all the songs on the iPad listed if you select My Songs. Swipe the songs left and right to locate the one you want. You can now delete it if required, start a new song (or duplicate an old song) or move it in one of two formats. The email option will not work at school as it assumes it can find your personal email in the email app. This does mean that a school could set up a common email or two for everyone to use to extract material, but I shudder to think at the management of that account in a larger school.
3) The choice of interest is "Send to iTunes". You are asked to select whether to do this as an AAC or a Garage Band file. If you choose the latter, you can import the file into a Mac version of Garage Band. The one we want is "AAC".
4) The iPad will then take a moment to process the file.
5) now connect the iPad to iTunes. What is important is that you do NOT have to sync it... and usually of coure you would not sync a school iPad to a teacher or student's machine.
6) Select the "Apps" tab, and scroll down the bottom. You will see a list of apps that can transfer data between the iPad and the computer. Select Garage Band
7) The song you chose to "send to iTunes" will be listed. Select it then selct "save to...". To add it to iTunes you would normally pop it in the iTunes folder on your computer.


So far so good. You have an audio file you can use in iTunes. How can you make an mp3 to use elsewhere? Simply right click on the file which should be in your song list, and choose convert to MP3 (or copy, then convert). You can then literally drag the file out of iTunes on to the desk top and copy it any way you like. Andrew Lack

MadPad: Delight

Some apps are attempts to emulate PC programs and concepts. Some apps are sad, some apps are exciting... MadPad is absolutely delightful.

For those who don't know me, I am unrepentantly a former high school music teacher. As I walk around and work each day I am always very conscious of the sounds that surround me. I often whistle, hum or tap to the beat of my footsteps or the pulse of the photocopy machine. I'll stop whatever I am doing if an accidental movement produces a resonant or interesting sound. I dream of going around the school recording the bell chimes of long veranda railings and down pipes.

And now... MadPad makes this a right and proper thing to do, not an embarrassing oddity, gives me the tools to do it with, and makes me part of a global social network of ambient sound recordists! As I said, what a delight!

This is a beautifully crafted app. One is presented with a matrix of twelve rectangles. Each contains a "record" button. You set up a simple "noise trigger" and you trigger the recording with a sound. The goal is to capture twelve small videos to a set, each with its own sound. The total video length is only a second or two.

When you have your grid full of sounds, you can tap any sound and it will play. Tap again at any time and it will play (even if the video has not finished). Tap two sounds at the same time. Tap a little rhythm, and you start to understand what you have in your hand. There are thus two distinct stages: putting together a set of sounds, then deciding how to play them to create a tune or soundscape.

There are some simple tools available for editing your sound/video samples. Each can have the volume adjusted, or can be played faster or slower (thus changing the pitch). I missed not being able to trim the clip to ensure that a sound component I wanted started right at the beginning. Sound sets are saved to the iPad, and can be shared via Facebook, Twitter or email.

Performance can be live, but you can also record a performance and either save this to the iPad Photo drive, or share to YouTube. For a more complex live performance you can set up a loop and play over this, or record a performance then play it back and play over this.

I showed one current music teacher at school and her response was immediate... "oh, I'd love that for my Year Eights". It was great fun making my first "sounds of the OLRC" set and I had positive reactions from both colleagues and some young students standing nearby.

Of course if your goal is melody making you can record notes from voice or a keyboard, or edit pitched recordings to tune them to specific notes you want in your set. This would work well in a school iPad set context with one proviso. We currently have our iPad cameras turned off to get past issues of distraction and students leaving self portraits as wallpaper. This app would certainly justify the time required to flick a set back on for a music class.

Because it is so easy to share, the thought of an entire room of amplified iPads all playing along together to create a giant soundscape sends chills up my spine. Anyone for "cereal swampcalls"?

Andrew Lack

I borrowed my first book on the iPad

Wait...what?

I don't mean "I bought my first digital book" no no no, I mean I went to my local library (virtually) and borrowed a book (digital) which downloaded to my iPad and which in a few days I will return.

The library is Castle Hill Library, and they have simply paid for access to the Overdrive system. This is an American digital library system, which is now available from Softlink in Australia. I tried this a little while ago on the computer, and was a little dismayed at the complexity to set it up. The iPad app that is now available makes it all work rather well.

To get started, you need to download the free Overdrive app. You then need to register with an Adobe ID. This is because the back system is based on "Adobe Digital Editions" which is NOT simply another name for Acrobat and pdfs. It is a fully fledged digital book management system. Books or magazines that are downloaded are time bombed... that is, they become inaccessible after a set number of days, and thus are deemed to have been returned.

In the Overdrive system, all this backroom tech is integrated into a full on-line library system. All the host library has to do is decide on the number of books they are prepared to pay for, choose the books and provide links to the Overdrive site. I would love to do that at Pacific Hills but the costs are quite prohibitive at the moment.

Back to the iPad. Once the Overdrive app is installed, and you have registered with your free Adobe account, you then search for your local library. It is interesting to see the lists of school and public libraries available... not that anyone can go and  use them: you need a library membership number to do that. Once you have identified a library you do belong to you enter your membership number and pin and start browsing.

Given how used we are to purchasing digital books (infinite supply) and obtaining copies of pdfs and free digital books (infinite supply) its a shock to find that the book you want is not available. How can that be? Under the Overdrive licence you purchase the right to loan a title as though it were a real physical book. Purchase two copies, and two copies are available to the clients. Purchase one copy, and if somebody borrows it, the title is unavailable till it is returned.

To assuage the anxious, there is an option to queue for titles, and I imagine an email is sent when the title is available.

The book downloads quickly, though the one I got was text only and the reality may be different with a graphical heavy work. The reader is adequate without being full featured. You can change to "night view", pick between sepia and white background, change the brightness and font size. I did find the page turning to be a bit "hair trigger". I prefer other readers that require a little "push" rather than just a tap.

So there it is, a really nice experience once the set up is done... and you can borrow a book from your local library from anywhere in the world and at any time day or night.

This is not a feature that I would think could specially help our school laptops, as it is predicated on the iPad being a personal device... even if your school actually has been able to provide the Overdrive system. It is worth talking about, especially as, unlike some, I find the iPad quite nice as an eBook reader.

Andrew Lack

Blogging on the iPad

This should be a no brainer but I guess I am going to have to wait a bit. I use Blogspot, and nothing much has worked on the iPad up to now. Safari cannot run some of the script required for the normal browser interface, and still can't even after the upgrade to the browser interface that just arrived. Two different apps that claim to be able to do it don't, or at least not well.

Now Google has released their own Blogger app. Unfortunately it is designed for the iPhone, with no formatting options. It is fine for blogging on the run, will include photos, but that is about it. At least it can navigate you set of blog titles and show you your post.

How would all this work for students? Blogs are not naturally a student's area of play, and I always hope to encourage students as much as possible when they hit new areas by having interfaces or programs that work well and are full featured. So far if I wanted to introduce blogging to students I would not do it on the iPad!

I must point out however that I am only reflecting on what works (or does not work) for the Google blog site (http://www.blogger.com/). Word Press does seem to have better support on the iPad. What would I expect in the future? An app that....

• allows you to move between your different blogs
• displays the blog itself fully formatted (though you can use Safari for this)
• allows reasonable HTML style formatting
• allows picture insertion with basic formatting
• supports link creation
• gives access to the HTML code but also shows a WYSIWYG editor
• spell checking

I don't really expect to get access to the quite complex CSS and template editing available on the Blogger site, but hey, Google, surprise me!

Andrew Lack

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