Using a Virtual Laser Pointer and Annotations during Keynote Presentations

When I'm teaching a presentation on my iPad, I do miss the ability to simply grab a pen and write on the screen, like I would on a traditional whiteboard or projector. Because we have TVs in our classrooms now, I mirror my iPad to the TV screen, and I'm pretty sure I'd get told off if I tried to use a marker pen on the TV itself. Luckily, my Skriva stylus will save me from getting into a lot of trouble with my headteacher because I can simply tap the stylus on the screen while I'm playing my Keynote deck, and I get a new toolbar of controls.

These look a little bit like the markup tools that you might see elsewhere on the iPad, but they're actually very different because the controls here only exist during the slideshow session. The minute you stop playing the slideshow, the annotations disappear, which makes them temporary, just like writing on a whiteboard. This means I can draw attention to key concepts, elaborate, and explain as I'm teaching, and my students know exactly which part I'm talking about. As I go backwards and forwards between the slides, it will remember the annotations for that use, but as soon as I pinch and close the slideshow, they are gone. Even if I press play again, they're not going to be there anymore.

But let me just play this presentation one more time because there's one last feature I want to show you, and that is this: on the left-hand side, there's a virtual laser pointer. Using this, I can simply use my stylus to tap or drag across the screen, and it will show the students on the screen exactly what I'm pointing at with that virtual laser dot. That's just another way that a Skriva stylus and your iPad can combine in the classroom to create an incredibly powerful teaching and learning tool.