Congrats! You’re in college! Everything is new, exciting, semi-stressful, and fun! You get to your first class, walk in, sit down, and bam! The lecture has started, and you’ve never taken notes faster.
That is how my first class went. I would like to think I was well prepared for my first week of college classes, but I needed to master a new skill. I had to learn how to take notes for each class and keep them organized. Some classes require a notebook and paper, some allow laptops to type notes, and some allow complete freedom in whichever note-taking style floats your boat. The first week in, I quickly realized some of the lecture slides had way too much material for me to copy down, and too many graphics or pictures that professors insisted we learn.
Here’s where my favorite iPad app comes in. Not to be dramatic, but it truly changed the way I take notes for class, arrange school materials, and organize my life in general.
Enter GoodNotes. This app is a PDF organizer for iPads and Macs that allows you to download and store all documents as PDFs in one place. You can make folders for each class like you would on a computer, and you can download any class materials. You can even write with a stylus directly on the PDF. It’s just like writing on paper!
You can choose from a variety of styles to create notebooks for each class, drag and drop text and written notes with the Lasso tool, and share/edit documents with other users. And, for those who don’t like carrying around multiple notebooks, your accounts sync to any device with the app, giving you access to your notes whenever you need them.
Now, if you’re lucky, and your professors give you access to their lecture slides, you can download their slides to the app and write DIRECTLY on them. In my opinion, this is the best feature because it allows me to have the original lecture material and add anything else important, like circling the “need to know” points or highlighting vocabulary terms. Additionally, you can add pages within the slides for whatever you might need. I used this feature frequently. In my anatomy and physiology class, I could have my lecture notes on one slide, and on the next, I could draw a diagram of the concept we discussed. In my phonetics class, I could practice writing the IPA characters as we learned them.
Overall, this app changed the way I take notes and removed some of the stress I had about how to stay organized for class. Yes, you may become a grown-up “iPad kid,” but your notes will be organized. Give it a try, it might just change your life!
Disclaimer: There are multiple versions of this kind of app. In my classes, there is a great divide between Notability and GoodNotes users. I’ve heard rave reviews from the other side, but for now, I’ll stick with GoodNotes :)