The Coll-APP-orative: Connecting and Collaborating through Apps

Tonight is a special night.  It is a gathering of sorts, that brings together six educators from across Canada with a passion for Early Childhood Education and blogging.  These exceptional educators include (but of course are not limited to!), Laurel Fynes, Sergio Pascucci, Tracy Pickard, Heather McKay, and Tina Zita, all of whom agreed to review their favourite App for Education via their blogs.

It is our very first collaborative blog hop and I am thrilled to be included! My heart sings for innovative ideas such as these, so I have to thank the creative innovator Sergio Pascucci for the birth of this idea.

Here are some of us photographed at the #HawkinsLearning exhibit in October 2013.

My App Review: iAnnotate PDF

The App that I chose is one that I hold near and dear to my heart.  It is called iAnnotate PDF by Branchfire, and quite honestly helped me to graduate from my Master of Education program this past June.  My cousin John Vongas, a doctoral student at Concordia University recommended it to me, as a way to organize my professional articles.  

iAnnotate "allows you to easily read, mark up, and share your documents" (App description).  I love how it stores all articles into folders, and how easily you can email them to colleagues.  With so many more electronic resources available than ever before, I needed a way to read them (highlight, make notes, mark important passages, etc.) and save them.  This app allows you to do that and more!  I now also organize all of my staff meeting notes, board memos, power point presentations, and any other important pdf files on iAnnotate.

iAnnotate is both an elegant PDF reader and a powerful annotation tool that finally lets you work with your PDFs. You can open documents from email, sign and send out contracts fast, enter notes for edits, sketch diagrams, copy text, and add highlights or underline with the drag of a finger!

-From iAnnotate PDF for iPad blog post

If you haven't tried it, I recommend that you consider this App, or an App similar to it.  It has made a world of a difference for my life and my files!  Plus, how handy is it to go into a meeting with your iPad and have all of your professional resources in one place?  Pretty impressive I think...

Here is an example of how to use this app from an attorney's digital office blog.

For more information, please visit: iAnnotate PDF Video Review: PDF Editor for iPad, iAnnotate PDF and Box OneCloud, or learn through your own tinkering around with the App!

P.S. I just found out that the latest version of Branchfire's iAnnotate 3.0 is now available with the ability to add multimedia, sync to cloud, and much MUCH more! 

Here is a list of the other 5 amazing Apps being shared today with links to their blogs:

Laurel Fynes - This kindergarten life

Sergio Pascucci - NoteLedge - crayons, wands, & building blocks: a journey through inquiry-based play

Tracy Pickard - Pic Collage - Passionately Curious: Learning in a Reggio Inspired Kindergarten Environment

Heather McKay - Book Creator - Igniting Creativity: Taking Risks and Talking About It

Tina Zita - Soundbrush - Miss Kit Kat: Confessions of a chocoholic, picture book addicted 21st Century Ed Junkie

Thank you again to Sergio Pascucci for organizing this blog hop and giving me the opportunity to participate in this creative/collaborative experience!  I also want to extend a huge thank you to the other five contributors who continue to inspire me to be a better techy teacher each day.  If you haven't already, check out their fabulous blogs!