Smashing Apps: Keynote, Coloco and Canva

Hello and welcome to Smashing Apps! This friendly conversation is a chance for educators to come together and share their top iPad apps and tips with each other - and the world.

Over the next forty minutes you'll hear from three Apple Distinguished Educators, Rachel Smith, Amarjit S Marva and Mark Goldhawk who will all be sharing and discussing a favourite iPad app that they use in their classrooms. By the end of the conversation our hope is that you'll have a head full of ideas to go and take back to your own classrooms and that will positively impact your own teaching. And if anything really strikes a chord or gets you excited we'd love to hear about it - the comment section below is the perfect place to develop ideas, explore these apps and ask questions.

So sit back, grab a warm beverage of choice (always a coffee for me!) and enjoy Episode 1 of Smashing Apps.

What follows will be a bit of a spoiler for the video above, so proceed with caution...

Rachel shares her insights on creating Animated GIFs using the Keynote app by importing photographs, removing backgrounds and then adding illustrations to bring them to life. She guides us through the Export as GIF options and shares some fun examples that she's made herself.

This process is a really fun way of empowering students to share their learning in new ways - whether that's modelling a scientific process through moving photography or bringing a character to life as part of their storytelling. In fact, we'd love to hear your thoughts on how GIFs could be bought into the classroom in a meaningful way - please do let us know in the comments below.

If you don't already have it, you can download Keynote here.

Amarjit shares one of his favourite apps, Sensory Coloco with us. This free app allows students to use their fingers to create bright, colourful and fun experiences on the iPad. Whether it's for sensory needs, practicing letter formation or creating a beautiful piece of art, this child-friendly app has a great deal of potential to support and motivate learners.

Being able to create an image with no fuss and no set-up is a huge advantage when compared to more complex drawing apps and we all have students in mind who would benefit enormously from having time with Sensory Coloco during their school day. I wonder if Amarjit's demo of this app sparks any ideas or curiosities for you as you watch? If so we'd love for you to share the in the comments below.

You can download Sensory Coloco here.

Canva is a huge app which simply can't be covered in its entirety in just a five minute slot. Thankfully, Mark decided to focus in on the Artificial Intelligence features which are rolling out across Canva - including some incredibly useful tools to save teachers and learners a great deal of time.

I particularly liked the Magic Presentation feature which will create the a presentation template for you based on the subject and lesson prompt you enter. Of course this isn't 'job done', but it's an excellent starting point for you to then go in and refine the content. Tools like this can save us lots of time and enable us to create engaging and interesting presentations with ease. But that wasn't the only tool Mark demonstrated in Canva - which one gets you most curious or excited? Let us know in the comments below.

You can download Canva for iPad here.

A massive thank you to Rachel, Amarjit and Mark for sharing their knowledge and ideas with us in this episode of Smashing Apps. We hope you've enjoyed this conversation and that you've got lots of ideas to take back to your own classroom.

Please do join me back here next month where I'll be joined by three new educators sharing three new apps. I promise you won't want to miss it!

- Jacob Woolcock