Sal’s Attempt to Go Mobile: Part 1?
by Salvador Fernández
Source: macstories.net (To be replaced with original picture)
For many people, mobile technologies are completely separate from classes. At least for me, I was used to taking all my notes by hand, buying a stack of notebooks at the beginning of each semester. I even had difficulties using my laptop for notes, because the wonders of the internet promised easy distraction. However, I have been giving it another chance this semester.
It started with Cell Bio. I tried taking notes in a notebook for the first week. It proved difficult because Cell Bio, like many biology classes at Yale, did everything through powerpoint presentation. And these powerpoints had important information on them. So I would be halfway through drawing a diagram of the cell structure, and the presentation would be 2 slides ahead. How was I supposed to have my notes organized with relevant diagrams nearby?
The solution was Goodreader. It turned out that Cell Bio uploaded powerpoints before class. So I downloaded the slides, and used Goodreader to annotate extra notes to my heart’s content. It also meant I didn’t have to print out the review forms they hand out, because I just wrote my answers on the pdf. Win.
I was still hesitant to use the iPad for other classes. Drawing diagrams with notes is one thing; notes that are nothing but words are another. Not to mention the stigma attached to busting out iPads in class:
Taken from a friend’s Twitter (I cropped out his name).
It wasn’t until last Thursday when I decided to play around with the iPad in other classes. For classes with limited visual materials, I figured Pages would do the trick. It took me a while to figure out how to do notes in a format that I can use (mostly because I couldn’t find how to do bulleted lists), so I missed the first 10 minutes of Shakespeare notes. But, once I got the hang of it, I was typing up the relevant points made by the professor about A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The same format worked for my Jews in Muslim Lands class, but with the added caveat of autocorrected Hebrew names. In any case, I’ve bumped up 3 of my classes to full tech-note status, with a 4th underway (once I solve the previously mentioned Chegg problem, I will work on Physics). Pretty soon, all my notes might be digital. Progress.
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