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iPad Pro Taking notes

Jal217

Jal217

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 28, 2015
157
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Im planning to use my iPad pro and pencil (whenever it gets here) to take lecture notes like a lot of people. Does anyone have any suggestions for what apps would be best for this?

When I take notes it's often up to 10 pages per class for diagrams and what not so it can't just be one page. Does anyone know of an app that allows you to take multiple pages of notes in one file?
 
Um do not use one note. It is really hard to organise.

Apps for note taking:
Goodnotes (my favourite)
Notes plus
Note shelf
Notability
And many more.

Also the stock noted app allows handwritten notes and now Evernote allows handwritten notes too.
 
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Um do not use one note. It is really hard to organise.

Apps for note taking:
Goodnotes (my favourite)
Notes plus
Note shelf
Notability
And many more.

Also the stock noted app allows handwritten notes and now Evernote allows handwritten notes too.
 
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Whats hard about onenote? I find it easy to organize.

You have notebooks->sections->pages. So for school use notebooks for each semester, sections for each class, and pages for each day of the class.
 
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Nutmegz said:
Whats hard about onenote? I find it easy to organize.

You have notebooks->sections->pages. So for school use notebooks for each semester, sections for each class, and pages for each day of the class.
Click to expand...

What if your classmate missed last week's class and asked you to email her just the notes from Wednesday and Friday? She doesn't want PDFs, because she want to somehow 'merge' them with her notes also in OneNote.
 
silverblack said:
What if your classmate missed last week's class and asked you to email her just the notes from Wednesday and Friday? She doesn't want PDFs, because she want to somehow 'merge' them with her notes also in OneNote.
Click to expand...

Just insert the PDFs into her one note.
 
I can't speak for the Pencil because I haven't gotten one yet, but I can say I've used Notability since my freshman year in college for writing/typing/drawing for 90% of my classes and it's been great. The latency is a bit high though, so it may be a bit frustrating to write with...way too much of a delay between moving the stylus and a mark appearing. But I guess I've gotten used to it.
 
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I agree that Goodnotes is an excellent app on the iPad. I'll be interested to see how it works with the Pencil. That said, it's relatively simplistic compared to a full-featured app like OneNote - which is both a positive and a negative. I understand that OneNote doesn't yet integrate the pencil nearly as well as other apps yet, so that may not be the best option right now - but overall OneNote is by far the best of the note-taking systems I've used - and I've used nearly all of them - for years. I also think, in contrast to the comment above - that it's among the easiest to organize. If you understand the concept of a paper notebook with tabbed sections, you'll understand OneNote's organizational system.
 
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silverblack said:
No good enough, because you usually make so many mistakes in your notes that she needs to be able to modify your writing/drawing.
Click to expand...

Insert the PDF as a printout and mark up that PDF as necessary. If it's really something you need to do on more than rare occasion, create a shared notebook and just copy any notes you need to share there.
 
zhenya said:
Insert the PDF as a printout and mark up that PDF as necessary. If it's really something you need to do on more than rare occasion, create a shared notebook and just copy any notes you need to share there.
Click to expand...

You just proved my point of how restrictive OneNote is, by not allowing one to save/organize notes in any way they want; e.g., one file per class.

I am speaking from an instructor's point of view, not students'. I want to be able to share my lecture file in the native format after each class, not as PDFs, with other instructors and students.

Another point I hate about OneNote is how poor quality the document looks when imported from pdf.
 
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silverblack said:
You just proved my point of how restrictive OneNote is, by not allowing one to save/organize notes in any way they want; e.g., one file per class.

I am speaking from an instructor's point of view, not students'. I want to be able to share my lecture file in the native format after each class, not as PDFs, with other instructors and students.
Click to expand...

As the instructor, I don't see how you could ever expect to have all of your students use the same file format as yourself. Nor can I imagine why I'd want to take an instructor's or anyone else's notes in a classroom situation and be able to modify them directly. If you want to share your notes with your students, a PDF is the most universal format as it's the digital equivalent of handing out a printout.

If you do somehow have to insist on a singular format, OneNote is part of Office; the most ubiquitous piece of software on earth. You could just have a shared notebook for the entire class that anyone could view and copy notes out of.

What note program are you using that allows you to hand out your notes to anyone to be modified in their entirety (including drawings and markups) using whatever platform they happen to have chosen?
 
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zhenya said:
As the instructor, I don't see how you could ever expect to have all of your students use the same file format as yourself. Nor can I imagine why I'd want to take an instructor's or anyone else's notes in a classroom situation and be able to modify them directly. If you want to share your notes with your students, a PDF is the most universal format as it's the digital equivalent of handing out a printout.

If you do somehow have to insist on a singular format, OneNote is part of Office; the most ubiquitous piece of software on earth. You could just have a shared notebook for the entire class that anyone could view and copy notes out of.

What note program are you using that allows you to hand out your notes to anyone to be modified in their entirety (including drawings and markups) using whatever platform they happen to have chosen?
Click to expand...

So instead of just saying OneNote can't do that, you kept telling me I am doing it the wrong way.

Apparently I am the issue here... unbelievable.
 
silverblack said:
So instead of just saying OneNote can't do that, you kept telling me I am doing it the wrong way.

Apparently I am the issue here... unbelievable.
Click to expand...

No, I am asking you a direct question. What note program are you using that allows you to share your notes in a manner that they can be modified by your students regardless of what note program they choose to use?
 
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zhenya said:
No, I am asking you a direct question. What note program are you using that allows you to share your notes in a manner that they can be modified by your students regardless of what note program they choose to use?
Click to expand...

I never asked for this.
 
I should probably check before writing and asking this but I'll just forego that process. Does Evernote support the new Apple Pen and writing abilities? I've only used it exclusively with a keyboard so I never had a need, but would be glad if it did in case I pull the trigger on the iPP
 
silverblack said:
I never asked for this.
Click to expand...

You said:

silverblack said:
What if your classmate missed last week's class and asked you to email her just the notes from Wednesday and Friday? She doesn't want PDFs, because she want to somehow 'merge' them with her notes also in OneNote.
Click to expand...

silverblack said:
No good enough, because you usually make so many mistakes in your notes that she needs to be able to modify your writing/drawing.
Click to expand...

silverblack said:
You just proved my point of how restrictive OneNote is, by not allowing one to save/organize notes in any way they want; e.g., one file per class.

I am speaking from an instructor's point of view, not students'. I want to be able to share my lecture file in the native format after each class, not as PDFs, with other instructors and students.
Click to expand...

That sure sounds to me like you are claiming that a limitation of OneNote is that you can't share notes to be modified by others.

So I'm asking what Notes app allows you to share your 'lecture file in the native format after each class' such that she can 'somehow merge them with her notes' 'so that she is able to modify your writing/drawing?'

What notes program provides this universal flexibility?
 
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