#goodnotesstories

Like a lot of other teachers, he was researching online for notebook apps, which led him to discover an article by Teddy Svoronos, who teaches Statistics at Harvard, that describes and illustrates some key features of GoodNotes that make the app particularly valuable for teachers. By integrating GoodNotes on his iPad in the classroom, Shirantha was able to replace PowerPoint and Keynote as his main teaching tools. Of course, we wanted to know why he was able to substitute two rich-featured presentation tools with a rather simple note-taking app for handwritten notes. He let us know that he found it allowed “a clearer, more vivid teaching experience for me and my students.“

“Don't let “Tech” get in the way of “Teach”

Since he relies on mainly two visual activities when teaching, which are “writing on a whiteboard“ and “analyzing printed sheet music“, he was able to simplify the technology integration by using an “all-in-one“ solution with a single app. Many teachers make the mistake to overwhelm their students when trying to use technology in the classroom. Building simple workflows is essential so that "Tech" does not get in the way of "Teach".

GoodNotes comes with a lot of built-in paper templates for every occasion, including some sheet music paper, so it is no surprise that many musicians like Shirantha himself pick GoodNotes as their go-to note-taking app. You can even import custom note-taking templates for other instruments like the Guitar for example. 

Surely, providing great paper templates alone is not sufficient to guarantee an outstanding writing experience. There is one thing that needs to be on point: The handwriting needs to feel natural and should in no way be inferior compared to writing on real paper. Luckily, Shirantha made the right choice: “My handwriting looks very natural in the app, even when enlarged. This allows me to create a variety of detailed annotations on a slide, using the included pens, highlighters, and the shape tool.“

Shirantha: “This is an example a quick in-class activity. I use the colours, highlighters and the shape tool for more vivid in-class assessment in my Music Theory course”

If you‘re a teacher looking to make your classrooms interactive, Shirantha has a great tip for you: The TV-out mode. When you connect your device to an external screen via HDMI or AirPlay the presentation tools will show up and the app switches into TV-out mode. This means that the toolbar and all other UI elements, like pop-ups, are hidden on the screen for the audience but still show up on the iPad. “[...]the TV-out mode allows me to use Slide Over view privately, so that I can see my lesson plans in OmniOutliner, take attendance, play music, or navigate to a website in Safari during a lesson without distracting the students.“ Connecting your iPad to an external screen during the lesson also comes in handy when your students are working on in-class written exercises. Take a photo of a student‘s assignment and add it to GoodNotes and it will instantly show up on the screen allowing everyone to see it. Shirantha uses it to offer feedback and write annotations right on the photo which “comes in very handy on days when the students bring their original compositions to class, as it allows everyone to read the same sheet music while they’re performing or singing.“

Shirantha: “[...] the colours and highlighters help to draw the eyes to pertinent info on an otherwise busy slide.”

Having done all of his planning work on real paper previously, he discovered GoodNotes via a recommendation from someone on Twitter. Since then, all of his paperwork has been moved into GoodNotes. “I do broad planning of my novels in GoodNotes, focusing on the pace and rhythm of the overall plot, once I have an outline“, he told us. Besides digital notebooks for this purposes, he also uses the app for sketching and designs ideas for his website. Especially when working with designers, it is important to be able to quickly sketch your ideas and send them to your contractors, so that they can make a visual masterpiece out of it. Matt told us that he uses GoodNotes a lot to collaborate with his cover designers, for which GoodNotes is helpful because you can easily import documents or images from an email attachment, annotate them and send them back without ever needing to use a printer or a scanner. If you‘re also interested in reducing the number of printed pages in your work environment, we highly recommend having a look at this paperless productivity hack.

Creative work often requires the right inspiration at the right time. For that purpose, Matt has a scrapbook in his GoodNotes library where he collects screenshots for inspiration, which he can annotate with his thoughts and to review the ideas later when he needs them. Speaking of inspiration: Many people travel around the globe for the sole reason of getting inspired. While he is on a journey, Matt likes to write daily notes (which is more personal than typing) to his wife, who is at home in Scotland with their seven-month-old labradoodle puppy Whisky, which he shares with her by taking a screenshot with the lasso tool and exporting it to Messages.

Still, it takes a bit more than having a creative mind and being able to express yourself properly to be a successful writer. Matt also manages all the rest of his paperwork with GoodNotes like “filling in PDF contracts and signing them“, as he was letting us know in the interview.

When we asked him if there were any tips & tricks or workflows that he wanted to share, he pointed out that he likes the possibility to use custom paper templates and covers in GoodNotes and pointed to our template repository, where we upload lots of additional covers and templates, like his favorite “Moleskine-like“ cover, made by one of our long-term loyal users.

We were particularly happy to hear that he was one of the users that is aware of one of the so-called “hidden gems“ in GoodNotes which are features that you might not discover at first sight: The eraser has an additional option called “Erase Entire Stroke“, which allows you to “remove things like lines and highlighted areas with a single tap, without affecting any overlapping elements“, according to Matt.

Last but not least, we wanted to know what would be different if he had not discovered GoodNotes for digital note-taking. His answer was pretty straightforward: “I’d probably be using a lot more physical paper, and that comes with an environmental and storage cost.“

I usually play live concerts – my work consists of playing concerts as a lutenist/theorbo player in Early Music ensembles and orchestras, playing solo concerts as a lutenist, and teaching the guitar at the local music school. Let me share with you how I use GoodNotes, as this app has been a real game changer for me: First I only used GoodNotes to take notes of the violin lessons of our daughter, this works very well of course.

The advantages for a trained musician By writing the music examples I found that GoodNotes is actually great for sketching down ideas for own compositions – of course, there are numerous music composing apps for the iPad, that play back your music and offer an on-screen keyboard. But for a trained musician like myself, who can hear the music anyway in his mind, the only thing that is really needed is paper – which is much quicker and more flexible than all those apps. Now GoodNotes is as quick and easy to use as paper, but even more flexible as you can copy and paste, and move notes with help of the lasso tool – it’s like paper on steroids… However, what changed everything is when I found that GoodNotes is great at reading and annotating PDFs. As I am specialized in playing early music, most of the pieces I play are not available published, they come from old manuscripts I get as PDFs from libraries. Print-outs are very cumbersome to use, as even with a very good printer it is still brown-on-a-bit-lighter-brown, so printed out it’s difficult to read. And annotation is nearly impossible on paper because one can hardly see the marks made with a lead pencil. So before GoodNotes, for printing, I usually had to either edit the PDFs, page by page, to get them black and white (using photo editing software), or type note by note into a lute tablature app. Both cost a lot of time and the results were never an ideal solution. This is very different with GoodNotes: I have all my repertoire on the iPad Pro, I can play directly from the manuscripts. Annotations are easy to see because I can use colors and what I write is „above“ of the music, so even on top of the authors ink I can annotate, where on paper you just wouldn't see anything… Best of all: I can even correct errors in the manuscripts by using a lighter yellowish color and brown to simulate the paper and the author's ink – and all of this is really easy to do… And since GoodNotes version 4.10, I can turn pages with a foot pedal, what means that now not only I can practice from GoodNotes, but also perform from it.

Why should you choose GoodNotes,  if there are apps made specifically for musicians.

Tell us about your work and your background.

I've been an architect for the largest part of my career, something like 32 years. Around 2009 I felt that business was changing in many ways, in fact too many for me. So I closed down my office and went to work with a software distributor. Our firm has been growing these past years, and I'm now the Software Development Manager. This puts me in charge of a yearly release of our software - including localization, translation, development, and documentation. I'm guiding a team of developers and a team of technical writers, 9 people in total, working in our Belgium and Poland offices.

How and when did you discover GoodNotes?

My first iPad was a 2 series, so that takes us back about 3 to 4 years - if I remember correctly. The first app I purchased was actually a simple drawing app, I forgot the name and I no longer use it. It wasn't until about a half year later that I started to use my iPad for note taking. I started with reading app reviews, something I still do now. GoodNotes 3 was receiving very good comments on the internet, so I decided to purchase it. GoodNotes 4 was a giant step forward at the time of its release, I gladly upgraded and never looked back.

In which work-related context are you using GoodNotes?

Actually, there are multiple contexts:

1. Journals

I create one notebook per month, kind of a journal. They're simply named 2016-02, 2016-03 etc. and they're in the "No Category". During workdays, my iPad is always next to me with GoodNotes ready to use. Any loose scribbles go into the journal of the month. Some of them are later processed into project notebooks (see later), others are just temporary notes or sketches while discussing things with my co-workers. Either way, I review my journal a couple of times a week, mostly in the evening as my homework.

2. Project Notebooks

Over time, I managed to classify my actual work into 6 main categories. I use abbreviations like [PRG], [OFF]... I use these everywhere: as GoodNotes categories, but also as Finder labels on my Mac. While reviewing my month journal, some of the information is copied over into these project notebooks. However, most of the content is created directly into the appropriate notebook. Typically, this would be meeting notes, concept drawings, reminders, schemes etc.

3. Annotating PDFs

While I leave my MacBook Pro in the office at night, I use my iPad at home for things I can do in the evening. In my specific case, it's often about reviewing translations from my technical writers. To do that, I save these documents as pdf, upload them to Dropbox or Google Drive - to open in GoodNotes later on.

4. Reference Libraries

Recently, I started to use GoodNotes to store all kinds of pdf documents and images that I used to store in p.e. iBooks. It took a while to change habits, but now it feels good to have everything into one app.

Tell us about the effect of using GoodNotes on your team's performance.

GoodNotes has a lot of import and export possibilities right at hand, and very easy to figure out. This has allowed me to develop and support a very smooth workflow where lots of information are channeled in. Images, sketches, pdf documents, text snippets, handwritten notes and concept drawings... they all find their way into my GoodNotes library. I typically use all that stuff in my notebooks to set up meeting agenda's, document meeting minutes, pass along new concept designs to the developers etc. My team members have come to appreciate my ways of creating content this way, after all they can store it so easily as pdf. At the same time, I upload a lot from within GoodNotes to our Google Drive. There, it's available to everyone in the team.

Which advantages do you see in handwritten notes, compared to the functions on your computer?

Much has been written about the advantages of handwritten notes as opposed to typed ones. I agree with most of the arguments. Handwriting feels like being more focused, I somehow think deeper because I want to capture exactly what I should write down. I can write faster by hand than typing, but I still don't want to write down every word that comes to mind before giving it some consideration. Somehow, handwriting creates a certain margin for that.

When I organise or moderate a meeting, or even attend someone else's, I never take my MacBook with me. I hate it when people around the table start to flap their laptops open, it looks like a wall of screens that allow no more real physical contact. I use my iPad with GoodNotes and my Bamboo stylus instead.

Another thing that I don't see me doing on my MacBook Pro, is to annotate my own notes. Indeed, after a meeting or a brainstorming session, I like to go through my notes again. Add some, delete some, and rearrange other.

This is so easy and smooth in the GoodNotes app.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your work.

I own Fuchsia Design, a full service residential interior design firm. My background is interior design and construction management. We assist clients with large renovations or new construction projects from beginning to end where our involvement begins with the architectural plans, and we work our way through electrical plans, plumbing plans, custom cabinetry drawings, interior selections, and furnishings.

What are you passionate about?

I’m passionate about getting to know my clients. There’s a lot that goes into ensuring a home ‘works’ in a way that is perfectly suited towards our clients’ lifestyles. Learning about who my client is, what their interests are, how they live in their home, and how they spend their time helps me to incorporate that information into their home. My job is a personal one. I’m creating the spaces that families live in - where they drink their morning coffee… open presents on Christmas morning… gather for family meals... My clients hire me to ensure that their homes are not only great but extraordinary, and I’m passionate about making sure they are.

What do you love about being an interior designer?

I love being able to incorporate creativity into my every day job while still being technical and detailed. I feel very fulfilled when I’m able to sit down and design custom cabinetry or design the finishes and fabrics in a space. I love that residential design has so much creative freedom, but that I’m also able to incorporate really technical aspects into it. A lot of people don’t realize how detail oriented one must be in order to execute a design for a home. Fuchsia Design produces pages and pages of specifications, schedules, and elevations, so that there is never a question of how to build or install what it is that we’ve designed. GoodNotes is an important tool in that process.

When and how did you discover GoodNotes?

I was a week into working for my first design firm, and I had already filled up an entire notebook with notes. I knew it wasn’t a good solution long term because I would have at least 52 notebooks a year to keep track of. I purchased an iPad and downloaded every note taking app I could find. I tested each one until I found one that was perfectly suited for me. That app was GoodNotes. I’ve been using it at least 5 days a week ever since, and I can’t imagine my life without it. That was four years ago.

How do you use GoodNotes for work and which advantages does it bring?

I use GoodNotes for nearly EVERYTHING. Within each client notebook, I important a .pdf copy of their construction plans which I often use to draw out electrical plans, flooring/paint diagrams, etc. I also use it to take notes in each meeting which are also stored in that client’s notebook. During client meetings, it allows me to quickly draw my ideas so clients can envision what I am talking about. For my employees, when they send me AutoCAD drawings or sketchup models, I import the photos and draw revisions right on top. Then, I can just select those pages and export them as a .pdf to email back to them with feedback! Two of my team members work remotely so it’s incredibly helpful to have a tool that allows me to share/email ideas without having to scan in actual drawings.

The graph paper is an awesome tool to helping me sketch to scale. I will often open the architect’s floor plan in a notebook and trace a room so that I can copy and paste it onto graph paper and quickly have a perfectly sketched room to scale. I also often sketch out a room in 3D before having my team member build it in sketchup, so she knows what I have in mind. I’ve attached an example of a sketch I did along with the sketchup model to show how it communicated my ideas to my team.

In which way do you organize your notes?

Each client gets their own notebook. All current clients are under the “Current Clients” category and all completed projects are archived under the “Completed” category, so I can still access them if I need to, but they don’t crowd my other notebooks which ensures my current projects are easy to navigate.

Are there any notebooks or pages you are specifically proud of and like to share with the world?

I’ve shared an example of a 3D sketch (see above), a highlight floor plan, and a sketched out space plan.

Tell us about your work and your background.

I taught high school math for 10 years in a 1:1 iPad district. I am now an instructional technology facilitator serving teachers in their use of technology to enhance and transform their learning environments.

When and why did you start to integrate technology in your classes?

I integrated technology in my classes the day I walked in the door. From the get-go, I was always striving to get more instructional technology in my classroom because I recognized its transformative potential. I started simple working to get a laptop and projector. From there I earned a SmartBoard and other tools. The big change happened almost 4 years ago when my school district gave students iPads. From there, I slowly started the process to going paperless. I was and am always on the lookout for technology that transforms.

How did your students and their parents react to your ideas?

Some of my students were resistant to change at first. They were used to lecture, paper and pencil, and the status quo. As they realized the technology improved the classroom and their lives, they got annoyed when I handed out paper! They were also surprisingly patient when I’d try new tech, and it didn’t work well. We’d simply try something else until we found what met our needs. I was very careful to always keep parents informed about technology use in my classroom, and I showcased it at our open house nights, so they understood not only what we were doing but why we were doing it. This ensured they were supportive through the process.

How did you discover GoodNotes?

I was searching for a good pdf-writer app. To go paperless in the mathematics classroom, students need to be able to easily write on a document rather than just type. I tried multiple apps, and all of them were missing key elements. My department head introduced me to GoodNotes, and it had all the features my students needed!

Which features are most important for your students?

Good Notes has all the features my students need: easy to use multiple ink and highlighter colors, typing and copy/paste capabilities, ease of sharing over multiple platforms, in-app archiving and organizational tools, and my personal favorite: smart shapes! My Geometry students who told me they couldn’t draw shapes well suddenly felt like Van Gogh with this app! This is the only app that has every single feature we needed.

Have you tried other Apps?

I have an entire folder of pdf-writer apps on my iPad. If someone suggested it, I tried it. I tried paid and free apps. Nothing was as awesome as GoodNotes!

What do you like especially about working with GoodNotes and how is it helping your students?

I love the smart shapes tool for math, and my students especially like all of the ink colors. They find it easy to erase mistakes and because of that, they’re more willing to start over and try again. No longer are they searching for missing papers or sorting through crumbled copies; instead, they organize notes, practices, and more right in the app. Importing from and exporting to specific folders in Google Drive works easily right in the app making app-jumping unnecessary.  My favorite feature: I got to break up with the copy machine! No more late dates standing there waiting for hundreds of copies. Instead I create and share documents with my students right from the app. Find a mistake 2 minutes before class or ever during class? I simply fix it, export, and share with my students. Easy-peasy! Thanks for making life so much more productive, GoodNotes!

Joanna tweets about topics such as digital technology in school as @digitalcrawford.

Tell us about your work and your background.

My name is Vincent. I'm 23 years old and I'm CEO and creative director of the german company anviFILMS and partner at the company Skynamic. During highschool, me and many of my friends were riding dirtbike as a hobby. We became quite good at it and even organized a recurring dirtbiking event in our hometown. During that time I discovered my passion for making films about dirtbiking. I also started working for Red Bull and produced a lot of shorter films about actions sports for them. During my last year in highschool, I found a company together with a friend who opted out later. We started working with drones and expanded rapidly. Now we have contracts all over the world and work together with tv channels, sports events, companies etc. In 2015 I started studying business administration at the Zeppelin University because I wanted to know how to manage my company even more efficiently and also prepare myself for the future.

How did you get the idea of working with drones?

In the age of 12, I flew remote-controlled planes and helicopters. Later I tried to mount a GoPro on my heli, but with the vibrations of the aircraft, the material wasn’t usable for movies. When the new technology of drones came out, I immediately realized its huge potential for the movies we already produced. Before we always had to build costly constructions to have shots from above. Since I always did a lot of shootings about freeriders or dirtbikers the drones gave me the opportunity to have multiple angles while filming the riders, that could not be achieved with normal cameras before.  

What do you love about your job?

I travel around the whole world to film at sports events, festivals, movie scenes, but also advertisings and TV broadcastings. I really enjoy the freedom I have, because I am my own boss. When I have a one week job in Africa, I can easily stay another week and prepare my next jobs, study for my bachelor, or just relax. Also, I work together with so many talented people like famous athletes from many different disciplines. Of course, it is really challenging to keep track of all your tasks, but right now it is perfect for me.  

Would you describe yourself as an aesthetic person?

When I'm preparing a location for a shooting everything has to be perfect. I prepare a lot in advance by analyzing the perfect time (light and weather) for a shooting, the angles, and the flight route our pilots have to take. So yes, I would describe myself as an aesthetic.

How did you discover GoodNotes?

I bought an iPad already some time ago, but I actually never really used it for productivity. One day I came home and saw my little brother taking handwritten notes on his own iPad and I asked him about the app he was using, which was GoodNotes. I became curious and downloaded it as well on my iPad. I've been using my iMac and my MacBook Pro a lot since I needed to edit my films there. But since I downloaded GoodNotes, I started to really use my iPad more.

Tell us how you use GoodNotes while you travel around the world.

As I said, I travel a lot and to unusual places, such as the glaciers of Iceland. Right now I have a job on a large cruise ship. I do take a lot of notes and it is very important for me to always have them with me, wherever I am. I used to rely on a regular planner, but the problem was, that I tend to forget it sometimes. Also, I was afraid of losing it or messing it up. GoodNotes is great because I can use it on all of my devices to take and review my notes or to organize my important documents. When I'm on a job filming, I often get approached by people that offer me new projects. I have some contract templates stored in GoodNotes that I can customize and let my new clients sign them quickly on my iPad.  

Also as I said, I am still doing my bachelor, which is not that easy for me, because I have to work a lot. For my courses, I do need to read a lot of scientific papers, which I cannot always print out and take them with me. With GoodNotes I can just import PDFs and easily read and comment them on my iPad while I am working on the other side of the planet. Also, me and my fellow students can easily share our notes, which helps me a lot, since I am not able to attend every seminar in person, but still want to participate in the best possible way.  

Why is it so important for you to work paperless?

I often have to be very spontaneous, and I do work a lot in moving objects and also locations that are dirty, for example at Moto Cross Championships, or in the Savanna in Africa. As I said I take a lot of notes or draw up flight routes and used to rely on a regular planner, which was rather unpractical while traveling. Also, I love, that my notes are always available on all of my devices.   

How do you work with GoodNotes during a film Job?

For every job, I import the storyboard of the film into GoodNotes and have it with me all the time. When the Director, Director of Photography and myself talk about how the shot needs to look like. I take notes and draw flying routes into the storyboard. Thanks to GoodNotes I can tell my drone-pilot how he needs to fly to find the perfect shot.

All over the world, we are bound to regulations and we have to apply for a permit in advance. With the regulations on my iPad, I can easily discuss them with the authorities on site.