MobileEd: Notability – Notes Sync’d to Audio

One of the things that I am often asked is, “We have ‘X’ iPads in our school. Is there a way to be sure students are leveraging them for every class?” or “We are using the iPad apps for different initiatives, but students are struggling to use them to take notes. They get caught up in typing and sometimes miss part of the lecture.

My typical response is have you looked at Notability?

While there are a number of iOS apps that can be used to take notes like: notepad (built-in to iOS), evernote, Penultimate, Pages and more… Notability by GingerLabs (Currently $.99 in the AppStore regularly $4.99) shines in its ability easily take and format notes while also recording the audio that is occurring at that same moment.

Notability is the perfect companion for the iPad in education. The app is simple to learn and use, but has a robust feature set which includes the ability to audio record a lecture while taking notes.

From a basic note taking standpoint, Notability simply excels.  Simpy type any information that you want. Formatting is done through a relatively intuitive toolbar just above the iPads virtual keyboard. There is a choice of 16 fonts / colors, with font sizes ranging from 10 – 32 pixels including bold, italic, and underlining. Additionally, you can use iOS built in copy and paste features as well as to add anything desired (including images from the web by leveraging iOS’s multitasking app quick switcher).

Notability - Screenshot

With the ability to change font size and color on the fly to create an emphasis within notes (or edit notes later to refine). Just about anything can be added into Notability. Typing is simply and clean leveraging the onscreen virtual keyboard.

From a more advanced note taking standpoint, Notability shines with the capabilities to insert:

• Figure Editor - Hand-drawn figures
  • Free-form and straight lines, squares and rectangles, circles, triangles, and text
  • Change both stroke and fill color and size
  • Change transparency levels to create overlays
• Image Insert – Add any image already stored on the iPad
• WebClip – Add an image and hyperlink to any website
  • Built-in browser
  • Simply one button “Done” to snap clip of site pulling the URL as well
  • Displayed in Notes as a resizable image
  • Edit to annotate or crop the webclip in Figure Editor
• Audio Recorder – Live recording of audio during notetaking
  • Continues audio recording even when in a different app via the iPad multitasking Quick Switcher
  • Syncs audio recording AUTOMATICALLY to what is typed.
  • Compresses audio quite well
  • Ability to “tune” the audio recording on the fly.

Even better, Notability has the ability to backup/export or share notes as Rich Text Files (RTF) or PDF as just the text, text & images, and or text & images & audio via:

• Email, iTunes, DropBox, iDisk (MobileMe) ,WebDav, Print

Notes can then be sent to a Mac or PC for further editing or sharing and even be brought back into Notability.

Highlights

Sync’d Audio Recording – One of Notability’s best features is how it seamlessly syncs the audio directly to the notes being taken at that time. Here is the best part.  When reviewing the notes, double-tapping on a word anywhere in the notes will cue the recording right to the section of audio that was recorded when that specific word was typed.  If there was a time of distraction, or something that was missed in the session, this feature allows for immediate access back to what was being spoken in that moment.  No re-winding or fast forwarding or “scrubbing” to get to that point in the lecture.  Simply a tap and it is being played.

Built-in Web Browser / Full Copy – Paste Functionality – With more publishers releasing web-based version of textbooks, and eBooks moving into the classroom, having the ability quickly browse out to a site for information, and grab a screen clip with hyperlink, while being able to copy a specific section of text or images set Notability apart from other apps with similar capabilities. With the added feature of being able to continue to record the audio of the lecture while switching to a completely different app and then return with supplemental information is amazing.

Create Drawings and Figures on  the Fly – Having an in-app drawing tool is definately a plus, especially one that includes the capabilities of quickly creating shapes, changing colors, and more. Being able to label parts of those drawings with text, and caption the entire drawing is amazing.

Hopeful Updates

Hyperlinks – Even though the webclip function brings over the URL of the page, Notability currently does not have the ability to create hyperlinks while simply taking notes and copied text that contains hyperlinks has the html code stripped out when pasted into Notability. You can still type the URL into a note, however, at this time, it will not become an actual tappable link, but it can be copied and pasted into a browser for access. While this can also be accomplished by a web clip (which DOES bring over the URL) it would be nice to have the ability to simply create a hyperlink while typing notes. GingerLabs related that this was a feature they were investigating for future updates.

iPad 2 Cameras – While images that are saved on the iPad can be inserted in notes, the app does not have the capabilities (yet) to access the iPad 2′s cameras to take a picture while taking notes.  One can switch the the iPad 2′s built-in camera app, take the picture and then switch back to Notability, but the extra steps  can be a hindrance.

Mathematics and other Symbols - Currently there is no way to enter complex mathematical or other text based symbols in typing or when creating a drawing. This would be a great help when taking notes in a math or science class.

iPhone / iPod Touch and Android Compatibility – Currently Notability is an iPad exclusive app.  While it is possible to share iPad notes and access them from other devices, it would really be nice to see Notability moved to a native app in other formats. This would then provide for additional amazing educational possibilities.

Hopefully, as GingerLabs continues to update Notability these feature will find their way into a really great note taking app. Below is a gallery of screen shot images from Notability.

So, how can YOU see Notability making an impact for students?

Image Credits: EdReach