AudioNote for iPad & iPhone

Posted on July 11, 2013 by E.A. Draffan

AudioNote 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

Posted on July 1, 2013 by E.A. Draffan

“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

Posted on April 12, 2013 by E.A. Draffan

“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

Note taking with a digital recorder

Posted on February 13, 2013 by E.A. Draffan

Edirol R-09HR digital recorder

“I generally do not take notes in lectures, as I have this problem where I want my notes to make sense, so that if I was looking at them afresh, I would be able to understand them. Also, I want to concentrate on what the lecturer is saying. What I do is I use an Edirol R09HR digital audio recorder [now discontinued] to record the lectures, so that I can listen back to them if I did not get something the first time, and I also monitor the recording by using headphones, so it is almost like I am listening to the lecturer through a personal listening device.”

Sam – Live and Studio Sound

Several Olympus recorders offer audio feedback and audible navigational support when saving or erasing files – The RNIB offer a selection of suitable digital recorders.

Recent discussions (Feb 2013) about the use of a Dictaphone in lectures has been occurring on the Dis-forum mailing list (login required) and a useful link was provided to research on student attendance when recording lectures and other aspects of lecture capture provided by University College, London.

iPod Touch to record lectures.

Posted on January 13, 2013 by E.A. Draffan

“I use the iPod touch voice record function to record lectures. In addition to paper notes, this provides a means of revisiting lecture material for revision, especially if concentration fails during the actual lecture especially if I am very tired during a lecture.”

The iPod touch voice memos “saved in a Recordings folder on iPod in the WAV file format. If you enable iPod for disk use, you can drag voice memos from the folder to copy them.”

MacWorld has a useful article about recording voice memos on the iPod and iPhone with some notes about the different versions and the extra accessories needed for some models.

iTunes U free app – open courses useful for extra information

Posted on December 5, 2012 by E.A. Draffan

The iTunes U app from the Apple Store has lots of open courses. It is very useful for my studies – you can listen to the course at the same time as looking at the slides in iBooks.

Henry – Web and Internet Science

It works on an iPhone and iPad – you need to register on the Apple store. Many of the courses are American. ‘Internet Economics’ as a lecture is an example from one of the courses and you have a podcast plus slides from Stanford University – “Future of the Internet by Ramesh Johari” You can speed up the voice up to 2x, pause the lecture and return to it later and rewind in short steps.

Lexdis 2.0

Accessible technology for learning

Category Archives: Lectures