🔗 Spending Time with iPadOS 13 — Robby Burns

This week on Robby’s personal blog, he shared some of his favorite features of Apple’s upcoming iPadOS 13. While he’s been on the beta far longer than I have, I agree with this list.

I did want to highlight two features I think will be most beneficial for teachers and students in an education setting: Desktop Class Safari and PencilKit.

Unfortunately, education is a field slow to embrace the latest technologies, and services like Infinite Campus, my school’s SIS, have been difficult to use from iOS’s version of Safari. No more. With a desktop class browser, all sites teachers need to use should be accessible from an iPad. I say should because I’m sure there will be outliers, but this is a big step forward.

With PencilKit, app developers will be able to incorporate Apple’s own Apple Pencil writing tools into their apps instead of having to design their own. In my classroom, I model writing and math problems regularly using GoodNotes over my projector. While GoodNotes’s pencil experience is good, it is slightly different than other apps like Apple Notes. Now I will can have a consistent writing experience across my entire device if developers adopt PencilKit.

I’m only on day 2 of my personal beta test with iPadOS 13, but working from an iPad has never been so good. I can’t wait to see how teachers are able to use it starting this fall.