Apple held its education-focused event in Chicago at Lane Tech College Preparatory High School where the company unveiled a more affordable 9.7-inch iPad. To push for use of the iPad within the classroom, Apple also launched a wide variety of new educational resources.
From apps and updates to products, we rounded up all of Apple’s new education initiatives.
Since the new 9.7-inch iPad comes with support for Apple Pencil, Apple’s iWork suite — which includes Pages, Keynote, and Numbers — has been updated to include more features. You will be able to draw, write, or sketch with the Pencil within each of the productivity apps. Using both Pages and Keynote, users will be able to add drawings into their reports and can now write in Numbers when creating lab reports.
Currently in beta mode, Pages also includes a Smart Annotation feature allowing teachers to add comments within documents in real time — which will anchor to specific text. The app will also receive a book creation feature — available for both iOS and macOS — where users can create digital books like short stories or travel books. To create a book, you will be able to use different templates in addition to iWork’s new drawing tools or images and videos from the Photo library. Classmates can collaborate on books in real time using either the iPad, iPhone, Mac, or iCloud.com and the finished product can then be exported and shared in iBooks.
Another feature in Pages is Presenter Mode which allows you to use your iPad or iPhone as a virtual teleprompter. Not only can the text auto scroll at an adjustable speed, but you will be able to customize text size, spacing, font, or background color during playback.
