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Tag Archives: iOS

February 13, 2012
by Paul Hamilton
2 Comments

Math on an iPad with Free Equation Editor in Cloudon

I’ve invested considerable time, and spent quite a bit of money, investigating options for doing equations and other math on an iPad. Three apps I’ve looked at offer potential: MathBot ($4.99) full version; Formula ($3.99); MathPad ($4.99 full version). Any of these might work well for a motivated post-secondary learner, but may be problematic for middle school or high school students, where so many learners need an alternative to pencil and paper for their math work.

To my great delight, this weekend I stumbled on a good solution for anyone who needs to do math on an iPad. I was investigating an app I thought to be unrelated.

Cloudon is a FREE app that provides 3 MS Office programs–Word, Excel, PowerPoint–on the iPad! These programs are completely functional! You can create and edit Word, PowerPoint or Excel documents, not just view them. Even better, the user interface is almost identical to the computer version. All you need to make it happen, once the app is installed, is a (free) DropBox account. Cloudon is so powerful, and the potential so great, that I intend write another more detailed post about it.

For now, I want readers to know that the Cloudon version of MS Word makes it just as easy to use Word’s equation editor on an iPad as on a computer. Because buttons and icons are smaller on an iPad, some users may prefer to use a stylus with it. (I wrote about Word’s equation editor HERE a year ago, and HERE three years ago.)

Here’s how you get to the equation editor in MS Word on Cloudon.

1. Open Cloudon and click on the icon identified below.

2. Select ‘Microsoft Word’.

3. Give your file a name and create it by clicking the ‘New’ button.

4. Open the ‘Text & Symbols’ menu.



5. Click on ‘Equation’ to open the equation editor ribbon.

6. There are 11 palettes of symbols, and these are opened as illustrated with a partial view of the palette for bracket symbols.

7. Here’s an example of an equation written with the editor. This image also shows the keyboard. It is noteworthy that this keyboard includes arrow keys because these are essential to the equation editor.