Loving Some of the IOS 11's Features

For several years, I used my iPad almost exclusively for all of my teaching with tech. There's much I liked about the iPad. Over the past couple of years, I've grown increasingly excited by the Chrome OS, specifically the vast array of free apps and extensions that add functionality to the bread and butter Google docs, sheets, presentations and gmail. As a result, I followed changes in the IOS for iPad much less closely. Though, to be honest when I did check I didn't see any significant difference between its various iterations from IOS 6 through 10. IOS 11, however, has gotten my attention.

IOS 11 does some things I like. ALOT!

For teachers, there are two changes that jump to the forefront. The first is that I can now edit any screenshot. Here's how. Take a screenshot. A small window will appear for five seconds in the bottom of the screen showing the screenshot. If I click that image within five seconds, different editing tools will appear on the bottom of the screen.

The other tool I really like love is the screen recorder. There's never been an easy way to capture what's going on on my screen on the iPad. To show kids how to do something on an iPad just got much, much easier.

Finally, I've written a bit in the past about QR codes. But they are so totally 2014 and from what I've read, seemingly dated. But now, in IOS 11, the camera doubles as a QR code reader automatically. When you bring up your phone’s camera against a QR code, it will be scanned instantly. I think this has the potential to breathe new life into QR codes in education.

Check out this video from Mashable highlighting the many changes of IOS 11.