After last session’s inspiring introduction to Nearpod, it was great to hear that the Allergy team have been using this in their new ‘Teaching the Teachers to Teach’ module and it is being well received by students.
This month’s iPAD coffee club focused on note-taking and annotating pdfs. Apple TV is proving to be a useful asset to the sessions, making it easier for attendees to share what they are doing with the whole group.
The free Adobe Acrobat Reader app can be used on a range of devices, and includes tools for adding highlights, text or freehand annotations to pdf documents. LiquidText is a free app for iPads or iPhones, that allows both pdfs and web pages to be imported. Sections can be highlighted or extracts added to the notes area beneath the document, and pages can be virtually “scrunched” together to compare sections or view all highlights. Papers 3 is another free iPad app that supports searching for relevant content, as well as storing, reading and annotating papers. The metadata for articles can be edited, and used to find similar articles online.
Another option for managing papers and references is the EndNote app. This can be downloaded for free and will synch with an existing EndNote account. An alternative is Mendeley which is available for iPad and Android.
The Notes tool available on iOS devices is useful for taking and storing notes. A new feature allows these to be organised into folders, and notes can include photographs taken of handwritten or printed documents, as well as allowing freehand drawing. It synchs with iCloud and Outlook so it is easy to access notes made previously.
The next iPAD Coffee Club at SGH will take place early in the summer term; more details are available on Eventbrite.