Thing 5 Notetaking

Springpad: Springpad is easy to set up and to use. I enjoyed the personable tone of the instructions and the search tool to find notes that I had written. That's a fast way to find things without paging through documents. I also liked how it uses the homebase of your iPad as a starting point for finding such things as nearby restaurants. What strikes me about this app is its wide range of functions. It basically works as a personal assistant, and I could see using it for collecting my own thoughts or recording ideas for personal use. It could also be used professionally as a kind of reference; in fact, this app is so multi-dimensional that I think it will take something of a shift in thinking to switch to using it. The barcode feature, for example, could be used to gain instant information about a book, whether for personal or professional purposes. As another example, I tried the TV feature and typed in Bates Motel to see when the series will resume. The app brought me to TheTVDB.com; from there I opened the site in Safari, which gave me a full-screen view of the Web site. Overall, this app works fast and is easy to use, and a person could play with it for hours. Its features for sending notes to others and following other Notebooks were additional bonuses, and I got a kick out having the ability to attach audio to a message. I give it two thumbs up.

Bamboo Paper: This app is fairly limited in scope, appearing as little more than a blank notebook page; it has the usual sharing and e-mailing features common to, it seems, just about all the apps I've tried so far. The usefulness of this app, beyond keeping handwritten notes, may be in its ability to demonstrate a process, a drawing, or anything else that can be demonstrated from scratch to completion; it might even be useful in demonstrating cursive to students, if anyone still practices cursive any more. A word of caution: If the user has large hands or fingers, this app could well prove frustrating to use. I know I couldn't get many words on a single page. (It charges for its tools, which is a disincentive for using it, considering all the free apps out there.)

Dragon Dictation: I tried dictating into Dragon Dictation three times and found that overall it produced a fairly accurate transcription. When I read a passage quickly into it, I found that it could not capture all the words, so it may be accurate to state that a speaker has to speak slowly and clearly in order for this app to be effective. But for a free app, it's not bad at all--and could serve as a notetaking/sharing tool for students who are not good/fast writers or for those students who would like to save time by dictating as they're reading a text or some other document for which they may need notes. I can see an app such as this as a serious time saving device in taking notes--or as a device that can serve disabled students unable to write. Other features: As with many other apps, it allows for easy sharing via email, Facebook, or Twitter. On the whole, it's a clever little tool.