iPad Class Note Taking App Needed!

I have yet to use my iPad for taking notes in class, though this is one function that I am looking forward to trying out come September, when I return to school full-time.

However, I have yet to find an app for the iPad that has the functionality that I would want in a note taking app. Many that I have looked at come close, and look great, but there is one feature I see as the most important, that none of them have.

Here is what I think is necessary for a university/college notes app:

• Text and Drawing
• Highlighting
• Insert Pictures into Notes
• Organization (date/time, course, text-search)
• Exporting (as PDF ideally)
• File Importing and Markup/Annotation (PPT, PDF, and DOC at least)

The combination of text, drawing, and highlighting give you the flexibility of handwriting your notes, with the added bonus of typing and an undo button.

Adding pictures into your notes is probably not required for when you are in class, but could be very helpful for enhancing your notes later on.

Having your notes tagged by day and time and accessible through search would ensure you can always find your notes from a particular lecture or on a particular term. When studying, and you come across a term that you remember learning at some point in the semester, being able to search for it and instantly find your note on it would be invaluable.

Exporting as PDF would be ideal. The worst thing you could do would be using an app to take all of your notes, then they are stuck in that app, unable to be printed or easily viewed. PDF would be an easy format for printing and sharing, though editable formats would be nice too.

My sixth point is what I believe is the most important feature, and one that no app on the iPad app store seems to provide. If any iPad note taking app nails this, I will snap it up in an instant. In my lectures, typically the professor will lecture, aided by a barebones PowerPoint file that contains the main points. What the professor actually says adds details, definitions, examples, explanations, and sub-points to the main points of the slides. The points on these slides are a great guide for your notes, because they organize your notes into a hierarchical structure that the professor has designed their lecture around. My favourite way to take notes in these sort of lectures is to print the slides, and make notes around each slide, including drawing pictures, arrows with explanations coming off points, adding sub points, and examples that the professor uses to explain the concepts. Printing these slide shows is a hassle, can become expensive due to the cost of ink, and is not the most efficient way to take notes. My ideal app would allow me to do all of this, by importing these slideshows as a PPT or PDF, and letting my add drawings/text to the slides, as well as notes below each slide. This way my notes would be directly tied to the professors slides, follow their structure for the lecture, and be clearly organized. I don’t expect to be able to edit these slides, I am not looking for this note taking app to be a PowerPoint equivalent – but being able to write and draw over the slides would be enough.

There are a lot of great note taking apps out there now, but I don’t see one that accomplishes this last point in a satisfactory manner. The best class notes iPad app that I have seen is called Course Notes. It is well designed, has a great organization structure based on time, breaks your notes down by course, has drawing/text/pictures, Wikipedia integration, and exporting. I suspect it would be perfect for me, if only it could accomplish point six, importing files for annotation.

Upon further searching of the App Store, I have actually found one iPad app that nails the annotation feature, called Noterize. It imports PDF and PPT files, allowing you to add text, drawings, and highlighting. Going even further, you can rearrange pages, add in note pages, import from Google Docs/Dropbox/Box.net/web pages, and export back to these, as well as Facebook, Twitter, and e-mail.

Course Notes has a much nicer icon and user interface design, but Noterize seems to deliver on my most wanted feature. If these two apps could fuse together I would be extremely happy, but for now, I am really looking forward to trying out Noterize when courses start in September!