Cross-posted from iPadApps4School.com
One of the things that I love about the start of the new school year
is that so many students have goals for making “this year the year
they…” For many students that blank is filled in with “stay organized”
or “take better notes.” If your students are going to be using iPads in
your classroom this year, here are five free iPad apps they can try for
taking notes and keeping those notes organized.
Penultimate provides
a place for you to hand-write notes on your iPad. The app allows you to
create multiple notebooks with multiple pages in each. You can change
the color and size of the pen strokes that are created when you write in
your notebooks. Each page in your notebook can include pictures that
you have stored on your iPad or pictures that you take through the
Penultimate app. The app provides the option to change the look of the
virtual paper on which you write. You can copy and paste content from
one page to another and from one notebook to another. This is my go-to app for writing notes.
inClass is
a fantastic free iPad app that students can use to take and keep track
of the notes they record in all of their courses. inClass allows
students to organize notebooks for each of their courses. Within each
notebook students can include typed notes, audio notes, video notes, and
pictures. The ability to store those four types of notes makes inClass a
great app for students to use in a science lab where they might want to
have a little video clip of an experiment along with their own typed
notes about the lab experiment.
Evernote is
the Swiss Army knife of iPad apps. Students can use Evernote for a
little bit of everything from bookmarking websites to dictating notes to
themselves. The app will automatically sync with students online
Evernote accounts so that they can access my notes, bookmarks, and saved
files from any computer or device that is connected to the web.
Fetchnotes is
a service for creating and organizing notes for yourself. Organizing
your notes on Fetchnotes is quite simple. When you write a note, just
use a hashtag to label your note. Then whenever you want to search for a
note just enter a hashtag. For example, if I was a student taking notes
in a history course I might use the hashtag “#revolution” for all notes
related to revolutions. Then I could go back and read all of my notes
about revolution by just searching for that hashtag. Fetchnotes lets you
create groups of people with whom you share notes. When you want to
share a note with someone else in your group just add @ before that
person’s name to have the task appear on your list and his or her
list. In addition to being available through the free iPad app, Fetchnotes can be used in your web browser. Fetchnotes also offers a free Android app.
Last but not least is Google Drive for iPad.
While not nearly as robust as the browser-based version of Google
Drive, Google Drive for iPad can be used by students to create notes
documents. If your school is using Google Apps for Education, your
students are probably already familiar with how to use Google Drive. Of
course, their notes will sync to their Google Drive accounts so that
they can access their notes through any Internet-connected device. Click here for a short (13 page PDF) guide to using Google Drive for iPad.
