iPads for School?

Previously it has been a futuristic dream to go completely paperless and completely digitize education. While walking through your lecture hall it is common to see a couple of students taking notes on a fancy iPad. It is now possible to store all your school work into a thin Ipad, but is all the hype worth it? 

By Akshara Bachu

I recently purchased an iPad Pro 12.9 over the holidays to go paperless and organize my work. Here is my experience using an iPad over the past couple of months for school. 

Cost and Other Options 

Paper vs iPad 

One of the best aspects of using an iPad is that it is hard NOT to keep your work organized. To review a page of notes, all I need to do is search up the page’s title in a search box. I now don’t have to carry four notebooks and a couple of folders to class. Everything is compact and literally at the tips of my fingers. As a person who always loses papers and previous notes, this has been convenient and time saving. I also can directly write on slides, textbooks, and any material I download. This helped me out while studying for the SAT as I didn’t need to waste a lot of paper printing out practice tests. Just the process of writing on an iPad is so much easier and seamless than on paper. I can copy and paste my notes on different pages, rearrange them, and change the color. A complaint about using the iPad is I have to zoom in everytime to write something. The lack of friction on the iPad makes writing on it without the zoom seem very shaky. Since paper has more friction it is much more satisfying to write on paper. 

Apps 

If you do want to use an iPad for school, here are some apps that other Early College iPad users and I recommend: 

Goodnotes (Note taking tool): Needs a one time purchase of $8.99 for the full package. It provides three notebooks for free, but I recommend buying since the full package is very helpful to organize everything. This app creates folders for you to put your notebooks and papers in. It is easy to download documents and edit them. 

Notability (Note taking tool): Similar to good notes, this lets you take notes and organize them efficiently. For the full package it costs $12.99, but in my experience the free package is also good. 

Procreate (digital drawing tool): This one is especially helpful for art. Needs a one time purchase of $9.99 for the full package. It offers a wide variety of features for digital drawing. 

Add ons

I tried fixing the lack of friction problem with a Paperlike screen protector. It definitely made it sound like I was writing on a piece of paper, but writing on it was too slippery and I still have to zoom in for neat handwriting. Originally, I didn’t want to carry both a computer and an iPad so I bought a keyboard case with the iPad. I bought a Magic Keyboard for my iPad. After the first day, I instantly regretted it. Though when I was using it looked like the iPad was levitating, the usability was horrible. The case can’t fold while writing on the iPad so I had to remove it from the case and use it unprotected. Also, I personally didn’t like the user interface on the iPad just because it takes so much longer to switch between using an iPad for a computer is definitely possible for school. Now I am using a plain case with a foldable stand. I also bought an apple pencil that magnetically attaches and charges through the side of the iPad. The apple pencil is more suitable for drawing, because the tip is more round. Nonetheless, it is perfect for taking notes too.