Educational event: new 9.7-inch iPad with support for Apple Pencil is presented

The Apple educational event, which took place today in Chicago (more precisely at Lane Technical College Prep High School), started with a video talking about imagination and how it is the key to knowledge. Entitled “One person can change the world” (“One person can change the world”), it focuses on how passionate people can change status quo.

Check out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkw8UBYn0pc

Lane Technical College Prep High School was not chosen for nothing. As Tim Cook explained, Chicago is where Apple opened (last year) one of its most beautiful stores. In addition, public institutions in the city are already teaching programming to children in collaboration with Apple, and Lane Tech is the one that most formed Ph.Ds among all public schools in the USA.

Apple’s synergy with the education market is great – and it’s not today. The CEO recalled that education has always been important to Apple since its foundation, and that the company has never stopped working on tools for educators. A clear example of this is the Swift Playgrounds app, which helps to teach the Swift language on iPads. In addition, children and teachers can also learn at various workshops and events held at Apple Stores (in Chicago, for example, there are two stores).

Apple already works with more than 40 organizations around the world to help learn programming, but wants to take these experiences even further. According to Greg Joswiak, there are now more than 200,000 apps focused on education. Many of them give children the opportunity to see and understand, in a completely interactive and immersive way, under a finished theme (for example, how a banana is planted and even hear from people who work with it).

According to a teacher who uses the iPad as a teaching tool, children are “content creators, not just consumers”.

New iPad

To help with this task, Apple today introduced a new iPad.

New 9.7-inch iPad with Apple Pencil support

His design is the standard we are used to, with the same frame, Touch ID and front camera. However, this is Apple’s most affordable iPad, now compatible with Apple Pencil – a feature that until now was exclusive to Pro models. The screen is high definition with low latency, brings the same pressure capabilities and tilt sensitivity. for Apple Pencil, including Pages, Numbers and Keynote (iWork Suite), which will gain support for pencils – with this you can easily add drawings and handwritten notes to documents, presentations and spreadsheets.

New 9.7-inch iPad with Apple Pencil support

A feature called “Smart Annotation” for Pages (which will not be available immediately), it will allow annotations about documents in a special and intelligent layer, excellent for teachers to evaluate their students’ work. Apple’s text editor will also gain a feature for creating digital books on the iPad, something that until then was only possible on Macs (yes, we’re basically talking about a version of macOS iBooks Author within Pages for iOS), which will have a series of models (templates) to be chosen – iPad cameras can also be used to capture content and insert it into jobs.

Speaking of the specifications of this new iPad, it has a 9.7-inch Retina display, A10 Fusion chip, 8 megapixel rear camera and a FaceTime HD front, Touch ID, 10 hour battery life and all the standard sensors and components that we are used to it (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, compass, accelerometer, gyroscope …).

New 9.7-inch iPad with Apple Pencil support

In the US, the new iPad continues to cost from $ 329 (32GB Wi-Fi model) for consumers and $ 299 for schools. It is available for purchase today and will be shipped by the end of this week to anyone who chooses to buy online.

New versions of the apps in the iWork suite will also be released today for download.