AudioNote for iPad & iPhone

AudioNote screen grabsAudioNote is a fantastic note taking app. The official description from the app store tells you how you can synchronise notes and audio with each key point being linked to the moment when the lecturer talks about that subject.  Because it works on a tablet or phone there is no need to wait for the laptop to boot up.

Bookmarks can be created throughout the audio recording to highlight important points for easy referencing.  It allows you to take pictures and insert them into your notes and AudioNotes can be exported to Evernote, saved and organised there. A yellow background can be used instead of white for those with visual stress/sensitivity. It costs £2.99 and is available from the iTunes store.

This YouTube video is a good introduction to AudioNote

This comes with thanks to the Disability Advisory Service at Imperial College

Speech to Text app on a mobile

“I like to generate a transcript of a lecture session and I use speech to text to dictate into my mobile or I record the session”  D.T.

There are several ways of dictating and producing text on the mobile – iPhone has built in speech recognition (Siri) for many of its apps or the use of Dragon Dictation when online that allows short paragraphs to be dictated and collected within its own note pad. Android has Dragon mobile assistant and if you want to experiment there is Utter in beta mode for commands.  It does not make the Android totally hands free, but it shows the beginning of an off/online conversation with reactions!

utter! Android Voice Command Assistant – BETA! YouTube video

Taking notes on an iPad and using iCloud

icloud“I don’t like pens and papers! Too much waste and extra cost.  I’ve been using my iPad with a stylus and several note taking/drawing apps so far. I synchronise all my notes with iCloud (it was iWorld before Apple introduced iCloud) and I’m perfectly happy – so is my room as it doesn’t have stacks of paper and pens around :>)”  Trinity – computer scientist

There are so many note taking apps and drawing apps that it is hard to advise which ones are the best but a combination of Evernote and Skitch is a good one – the Appadvice site has a note taking advice page with many more apps and the University of Exeter have a blog with a review of some more useful time management, maps, social network and note taking iPad apps. They mention WritePad that has handwriting recognition. 

WritePad for iPad YouTube Video

 

Using academic word lists to help with assignments plus WordSift or Wordle

“I find the online websites that have subject specific word lists are helpful when looking for words that need to be used for academic writing”  Lettie

There is the WordSift site at Stanford University that works like Wordle showing a section of text with the words you use most being shown in large sized fonts.  The WordSift site also has the Visual Thesaurus to help when making choices of words.

Here is a YouTube video tutorial using WordSift

Evernote for organising courseware

“In order to organise my courseware I use an online tool called Evernote.  This helps me to ‘clip’ useful information from websites and also to save some reminders. The app can be used online as a web app and also installed as a Chrome browser bookmark or Android and iPhone mobile or tablet app.  The offline app can then sync to your profile.” Andreas (MSc Web Science)

Keith Everett has provided a useful YouTube video about how he has worked with Evernote and he shows the Chrome browser bookmark as well as talking about linking with a mobile phone.

SwiftKey Android mobile app for speedy keyboarding.

SwiftKey mobile app for Android is super great with writing prediction. It can even create meanings from very incorrectly spelt words.  Great for speed writing an also for dyslexic users!”  Andrew (computer science)

SwiftKey have produced a YouTube video of their version 4 of the app where you can also write phrases with word prediction.