I had always been wary of digitizing notes and schoolwork. It wasn’t a fear of the Cloud messing up (knock on wood)—I’ve just preferred handwritten notes and physical notebooks. The closest I had gotten before now was writing notes in my Rocketbook and scanning the pages. But a combination of BU’s Learn from Anywhere and Apple’s release of the iPad Air had me finally taking the leap.
So, here are some tips and tricks I’ve found super helpful!
- Use iBooks to your advantage.
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The Books app on Apple devices is a godsend. I very rarely purchase books from the bookstore, but I download so many pdfs and epubs on libgen and other similar websites. It’s been so helpful to have all of my textbooks and books for English classes in one easy-to-access place. You get the best of both worlds here too—you can treat the books like physical copies by highlighting and annotating (only for pdfs), and you can search the whole thing for keywords and text.
- Download a note-taking app like Notability.
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For me, Notability is an absolute necessity for note-taking on the iPad. Some people prefer other notes apps, but after perusing them all, I like Notability the best. There are so many cool features, such as converting your writing to text, lassoing a section to move it/duplicate/change the style, drawing perfect lines and shapes, and more. There also aren’t many different pen types, which may be a limitation for some, but I find it overwhelming when apps present a million different brush types.
- Use Split Screen for copying down notes/information.
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I almost never use Split Screen on my laptop, but it’s such a convenient feature on the iPad! I’ll often have Notability on one side and Safari or iBooks on the other. I love not having to look at two different screens while copying information from one place to another—it’s all about efficiency!
If you’ve been hesitant about jumping into the digital note-taking world, consider these advantages!
While pen and paper always have a place in my heart, an iPad is super helpful for classes—especially in the age of remote learning! Happy note-taking!
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