Fun with Keynote for iPad

Our school is in the process of moving to 1:1 iPads. Part of my job is to provide professional development for our staff. I've decided to share some of the materials I'm putting together here. The references I make to individuals in this material are to members of our staff.

Sorry for the very heavy focus on Keynote in my blog lately. I'm sure I'll get bored and move on to something else soon.

There is a lot of power in Keynote to style, arrange, and edit items. You can use this power when making your presentations or you can co-opt this power for other creative endeavors. The videos below assume you already know some basics about Keynote for iPad. If not you should watch this video for a quick overview.

We first need to learn about the formatting options that are available. You can access the formatting options by selecting an object and then touching the paint brush.

Watch this video to learn about some of the formatting options:

Do the following after watching the video above:

1. Create a new presentation
2. Add a slide with pictures and text
3. Use the formatting tools to change the styles of your objects.
4. Add an interesting border to your pictures
5. Change your font and text styles

Have you ever taken a picture to use in a presentation only to find out you need to bring it into an image editor to crop or resize it before you can use it? You can actually do this right in Keynote.

Watch this video about working with the Image Mask:

Do the following after watching the video above:

1. Go back to the presentation you were just working on or create a new presentation
2. Add a slide with a picture on it
3. Tap the plus to put your own picture in.
4. Double tap your picture to edit the image mask

The last skill we need is called Instant Alpha. This will work best if your picture has a uniform background. This can be used to create silly pictures, but is can also add a touch of awesomeness to your presentation without much extra effort. Thanks to Andy Losik for showing me this.

Do the following after watching the video above:

1. Create a new presentation
2. Add a blank slide
3. Use your iPad to take a picture of yourself or someone else with a fairly neutral background
4. You may find you need to edit the image mask to crop your picture first
5. Now put your subject into someplace awesome