GoodNotes

GOODNOTES

GoodNotes is a digital note-taking software designed to help businesses take, edit, store and manage handwritten notes via mobile and web applications.
The platform includes handwriting and optical character recognition (OCR) technology, which enables users to search digital notes using custom keywords.

NOTES CREATOR

Pedagogical background
GoodNotes allows teachers to continue their move towards a completely paperless working environment:
“GoodNotes allows you to create notebooks on your iPad however the advantage of these notebooks over physical notepads is that you can customise the contents to match what you need, along with filing them in a range of fully customisable categories”.

The three main use cases for GoodNotes are the following:

1. Lesson Planning
Enter GoodNotes combined with the Apple Pencil, using a combination of Pages and Photoshop, teachers can create their own page templates which make up their own planner. The advantage of this is that absolutely everything is on the iPad. However, teachers can also export the whole planner or individual pages to a pdf.

2. Class Notebooks
For each of the classes they teach, teachers can create a separate notebook at the beginning of their course.
This notebook contains every single set of notes which we create on the whiteboard together.
One of the great features of GoodNotes is its external display mode, this means that when the teachers activate airplay on the iPad all the students see on the screen is the content – not the software keyboard and drawing tools.
In other words, the iPad is essentially the keyboard and the graphics tablet: this feature allows teachers to walk around their classroom, talking directly to students and still keep content flowing to the whiteboard.
If there is not an Apple TV in classroom, there are two great pieces of software called AirServer and Reflector 2, which allow teachers to airplay to their projector using their computer as the go-between.

Assessment
It can be used for summative assessment or for formative assessment to stimulate reflection or critical thinking. This second option is the most interesting in terms of learning and soft skills development. Quizzes can be performed by students by themselves or during class: the tool automatically grades the performance.
The teacher can also prepare feedback (that is shown automatically by the tool) or discuss results in class together with students.
For instance in one of the cases analyzed the teacher gives students a question about a physics problem to be attempted individually. Then the teacher asks students to discuss among peers about their answers to the question in group of 2 or 3.
After few minutes he stops the discussion and he asks students to answer again individually. At the end the teacher shows the right answer.
This use of classroom response system has been undertaken in a large classroom (more than 200 students) to stimulate engagement, self reflection and discussion among peers.

Use cases/examples of usage: (tutorial)

Strenght:
• Ability to sort notebooks into folders.
• Notes look cleaner in this app, and you’re able to customize notebooks to make it more personal.
• Three custom pen colours always available and just one tap to switch between them.
• Pictures inserted into the notes are able to be moved around.
• The unlimited organization of notebooks within folders.
• The search feature.

Weakness:
• The pages do not auto-lock to the width of the screen.
• The developers do not let you decide the backup file format.
• There is no voice recording function.

People opinion about the tool: https://www.g2.com/products/goodnotes/reviews

Similar Tool: Notability; Notabase; MeisterNote.

Technical and operational requirements: a mobile/PC.