This year Durham Academy provided iPads for the whole middle school. After having them for a few mounths they have been very helpful. We have some textbooks on the iPad and some books just to read for fun. A lot of times we don’t even have to take as many binders home because the homework is on our iPads. I’m really glad we got iPads because they can be used for many things other schools can’t do.

Evernote is an app on our iPads. It is used daily by most Durham Academy students because it is very helpful. Why is it helpful? This app is very helpful because you can take notes, find handouts that teachers have shared with students, find what your homework is, and mail important things to teachers if they need to read or check them. Some students find all their homework in Evernote, but some use their Reminders app to record homework during the school day. I love Evernote, although sometimes it is stubborn and won’t cooperate. I am glad we have Evernote because it is a good source to easily find work if you are absent or forgot what the homework for certain classes were.

Another helpful app on our iPads is the Outlook Mail app. It is useful because if you need help on homework, don’t understand something, or forgot how to do something, you can easily contact a teacher or friend about it instead of coming to school early to figure it out or calling someone. On this app you can send pictures, messages, and messages to multiple people. It is also very simple to send a new message, reply to a message, save a draft, and read incoming mail. One bad thing about this app is that if you don’t have internet it will not send mail. Other then that the Outlook Mail app is a great way to quickly get in touch with people.

The last helpful app is Mindmeister. You can use it for taking notes and making maps which can be used for studying our vocabulary words. You can also insert photos, document, and PDFs. We use it most in our Language Arts class. Now that we have our iPads we can say bye to paper and pen and do it on Mindmeister much faster!