A very basic set of colored pens, highlighters, and erasers, with no ability to adjust the thickness or use other colors.
PowerPoint: Not great, but not bad either.Let’s take a look at how each performs, both in terms of handwriting and presenter mode. My love for GoodNotes is no secret, so I’ll focus on that in this post, but Notability seems to be roughly the same in terms of features for our purposes. I used to not recommend Notability for teaching because it lacked a presenter mode, but the developers have finally added it (just a week ago at time of writing). There are many options out there, though the two most popular are GoodNotes and Notability.
If you prefer a blank whiteboard, or use Beamer, or like to zoom in and out, or simply like to write a lot, PDF annotation apps are nimble in ways that more traditional slideshow apps are not. GoodNotes (.pdf): Flexibility and Power.Keynote has, in my opinion, an unparalleled ability to animate and show context. Keynote (.key): For the Aesthetically Minded.If you use slides in your class, there’s a very good chance that they’re PowerPoint slides. PowerPoint (.pptx): The People’s Choice.Each of these has its own type of presenter mode that you should experiment with: I’m going to go through the most popular options below. This is especially useful for teachers, since it (a) ensures that the students only focus on your content and not the details, and (b) allows you to have additional reference material on your iPad that students don’t see. When deciding which app is best for you, I prefer apps that have a “ presenter mode” – that is to say, when the iPad is projecting onto an external screen, the app’s UI and other apps on the screen are hidden from the external screen (see my old post on Keynote for examples). With the advent of the Apple Pencil (a tool I highly encourage you to use in lieu of a traditional chunky stylus, provided that your iPad supports it), writing on an iPad has reached new levels of ease and comfort. There is no shortage of apps for the iPad that allow you to write or draw. Question 1: What app should I use to write?
I’ll try to describe the pros and cons of each option, and articulate why I do things the way I do. In this post I’m going to outline these choices and your options.
The two main decisions you have to make when using a tablet are: For that I suggest using a tablet (in my case, an iPad). But many of us need the flexibility of handwritten words and drawn diagrams. Instead of a whiteboard, for example, you could have a Google Doc that learners can follow along with or even contribute to. When teaching online, there are lots of ways to approximate the benefits of writing without a stylus. Plus, it lets you do something with your hands besides fidget. Writing helps guide learners toward the ideas that you consider important, and it helps organize thought processes and discussions. We write on a whiteboard/blackboard, or write on handouts using a document camera, or write on slides being project on a screen. No matter what we teach, many of us make use of handwriting when in the classroom.