Planet Telecom | All about Gadget

Many institutions have been using Apple in education for many years, but recently their latest innovation, the iPad, has been changing the classroom environment.  Using the iPad for Education has the potential to ignite learning and inspiration in children, and simplify tasks they do every day.  Amongst the 300 000 apps available on Apple’s app store, there are thousands of excellent educational apps, enabling children to interact and connect with their learning.  Here are some of the best educational iPad apps.

•             Star Walk

Star Walk is one of the most advanced apps available for the iPad, and has won many awards for innovation.  It uses augmented reality to bring astronomy and stargazing to life.  Hold your iPad up to the sky and you’ll see a virtual view of the heavens that rotates as you move your iPad around.  It’s ease of use and comprehensive explanations make this the perfect app for novice and experienced stargazers alike.

•             Math Bingo

Math Bingo turns one of schoolchildren’s most loathed subjects into an addictive and enjoyable game.  The concept behind Math Bingo is simple – users have to answer maths problems to fill spaces on a bingo board.  Winners are then awarded with an animated ‘math bug’, that can be played with and made to move around using the iPad’s accelerometer.

•             Colour & Draw

For younger children, Colour and Draw is an excellent way to introduce them to the iPad’s interface.  Using the iPad’s Multi-Touch screen, children can colour a variety of included images, as well as being able to add doodles to any of their own pictures and photographs.

Multi-card readers used to be the kind of thing we saw on CSI and marvelled at “So convenient! So advanced! So out of our price range!”  Well good news folks! The age of having the capability to easily access more than one type of memory card in your own home has arrived! We’re fairly sure you’re as excited about this as we are… right?

Of course, the main advantage of investing in memory card readers is convenience. More folks than ever conduct their daily business – school-work, work-work, messing-about-on-Photoshop-work – and pop it onto a variety of memory cards for easy transport (or hiding from the boss, who tends to frown upon employees who use company time to paste his head onto a giant panda using Adobe Elements!)

Of course, a lot of laptops and towers have built-in SD card slots (SD memory cards still reigning as the dominant form of data transfer and storage for most folks) however that still leaves your CF and some micro SD cards jumping up and down on the floor to cries of “What about me!”

USB card readers like Kingston’s High Speed USB 2.0 can support fifteen types of flash memory cards in its four ports. Opting for a card reader that runs off USB 2.0 connection is perhaps the most convenient path to take.

One of our favourite thrifty little power-saving memory card readers is the Fuji Memory Card Reader (under £1.50!) Just pop your memory card into the memory stick card reader and away you go!

In recent years, memory cards have become an essential piece of kit.  Memory cards have become ubiquitous in a variety of gadget including mobile phones, e-readers and camcorders.  In cameras, they have replaced 35mm film as a way of recording your photographs.  Many PCs and printers now have memory card readers, making them one of the easiest and most useful ways of storing data.  They are also extremely portable, meaning that you can carry a variety of memory cards of differing sizes and brands at any one time.  However, not all memory cards are equal.  Take time choosing your memory cards to make sure you’re getting the most out of your peripherals.

Memory cards made by well-known manufacturers are considered to be more reliable.  Using a low quality memory card can increase the risk of your data being corrupted, particularly when your remove the memory card from your device.  Memory cards can also have can also differ in the speed it takes to write data to them.  Always make sure you wait a few seconds before removing a memory card from a device, or else you could run the risk of losing valuable information.  Using a memory card with a faster write speed will reduce the length of time you have to wait before removing the card from your device.

One of the most commonly used memory cards is the SD memory card.  Developed and manufactured by Panasonic, SanDisk and Toshiba, they can be used in a variety of multimedia devices.  SD cards have a standard capacity of 2 GB, but there are high capacity versions that can store up to 32 GB.  There are also smaller, micro SD cards available for smaller devices such as smartphones, and you can purchase adaptors to utilise micro SD cards in regular SD card readers.