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"I love the iPad but I really hate typing on it. Though touch screens are magnificent for some tasks, frankly typing just isn't one of them. Maybe it's my hands and fingers fault or maybe I'm just a grouchy old school tactile typer, but I struggle to get in any kind of real workflow that involves typing more than a sentence or two on touch screens. I'm probably not the only one to feel this way, so here are six helpful tips to improve the typing and writing experience on the iPad:"

"One of the most frustrating things to type on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch keyboards is an email address. Typing out a name, then tapping the ".?123″ button to access special characters and numbers, then tapping it again to type more letters, than tapping it yet again to type a period, and again to finish off an email address, by the time you're done you've shifted between the touch keyboards half a billion times. Instead of repeating that process over and over again, do yourself a favor and create a keyboard shortcut for your email address."

"All of us have phrases we use frequently when writing. For example, I often type "iPad Academy" or "Thanks for contacting me" in my email messages. If you have phrases you type repeatedly, you can create shortcuts (abbreviations) for these phrases. The shortcut, composed of a few characters, automatically expands to become the phrase it represents."

"Learning to type well on the touchscreen keyboards of an iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch can take some time. To speed that process up, here are a handful of great tips to make typing on iOS virtual keys much easier and faster. Some of these you'll probably know and some you probably won't, but all are very worthwhile to learn and master:"

"Double tapping the spacebar in iOS inserts a period at the end of a sentence and starts another, a feature that can really improve typing on the virtual keyboards of iOS, but not everyone likes the behavior. If you don't want the iPhone or iPad to automatically type periods at the end of a word, here's all you have to do:"

"None of us enjoy typing out our email address, especially if we have to do it a number of times a day on an iOS device. But thanks to the new Shortcuts feature in iOS 5, we don't have to. Here's how to setup a shortcut that will save you from typing out your email address forever!"

"The iKeyboard was another Kickstarter success story at Mocworld / iWorld 2012, garnering over 6 times what the required threshold was for funding. Its mission is to "addresses the one drawback of a tablet computer" which is the inability to touch type on the iPad's virtual keyboard. Again, I'm not a fast typist - I definitely need to work on that to improve my overall productivity when writing. The iKeyboard gives me the opportunity to work on that on what is often my primary writing tool."

"We have long been fans of the free Zite Personalized News on the iPad. The Universal app lets you choose groups of news types, then watches what you tend to read to find more of similar type content. Every now and then throwing in a bit of 'other' news to keep you well informed of your options. This week, the Zite developers released a version 2.0 with a new app icon and a new user interface throughout."

"Typing on iOS device is an almost flawless experience - until the autocorrect function spoils everything, sometimes making a joke out of something when it wasn't your intention in the first place."

"Ever wondered how to type the degree symbol on the iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch virtual keyboard? Me too!"

"or the iPad, the 'modern' radio is the Pandora app. This free (account set up required) universal app lets you decide the type of music you want to have streamed to you. After choosing a type of music or a band, Pandora starts streaming a song to you. With the song is quite a bit of text giving you fun facts about the band, song or album."

1. Type your message 2. Click "Generate QR Code" to qurify the message. 3. Download the QR Code image. 4. QR Code Done!

Geography seems to me to be one of those subjects that actually lends itself to the type of multimedia multi-sensory experience that is the ipad. Some of the apps in this post allow you produce beautiful infographic style maps using your data, others allow you to explore the ways in which the world is being effected by population. The map of disasters is a hard one to ignore especially in the context of the recent spate of tsunamis and earthquakes. Have a look at this small selection of apps that are available to see if any would benefits your students. Make sure you also check out the link on the home page to our extensive list of History and Geography Apps.

"Geography seems to me to be one of those subjects that actually lends itself to the type of multimedia multi-sensory experience that is the ipad. Some of the apps in this post allow you produce beautiful infographic style maps using your data, others allow you to explore the ways in which the world is being effected by population. The map of disasters is a hard one to ignore especially in the context of the recent spate of tsunamis and earthquakes. "

"Even though it's October it still feels very much like the beginning of the year. One of the first thoughts that many teachers have about their students is "they look so little!" It's true. Those tall confident students that left us have gone on to be "little" to next year's teacher and we have our own new crop of "little" people to educate. This becomes even more pronounced in a technology classroom. Everything takes longer, typing, starting, opening, finding, searching. Whatever it is they need time to figure it out. Patience is key. So what can we do?"