One of the things that I always hear people say about iPads is that it is great for “consuming” content, but not for “creating” content. I disagree that an iPad cannot be use for creating content and one of these apps that I use to create content is Skitch.

Skitch is an excellent tool for creating quick grahics on an iPad. One of the reasons why I like this app is because it comes with a simple toolset that will let you annotate images. I like the fact that I can take my iPad somewhere and use the camera to take a picture of something. Then I can annotate the photo so that the image becomes self explanatory to my students. Instead of a box of text telling them where to look, I can point to it with an arrow or draw a circle around it.

Skitch can access images from a number of sources:

• images you have in your photo library (including images you have saved from your email to the Photo Library),
• pictures you take with the camera on the iPad,
• screenshots of the iPad,
• images of a webpage,
• maps, or
• start with a blank image and draw anything

Once you have finished your image, you will probably want to display the image somewhere other than on your iPad. One of the easiest ways to get you image off your iPad is to email the image to yourself from within the Skitch app. When you do this it will save the image as a JPEG that you can then use in a Word document or embed in your online course. Other options include sending the image out via Twitter, saving it to the camera roll (then downloading through iTunes to iPhoto), or displaying the image on an Apple TV via AirPlay. If you are an Evernote user, you can also send the image over to the Evernote app as a note.

Skitch is free and is available for:

• iPad
• Mac OS X