UPAD:What You Need To Save Paper!

[Beau Barrett]

The iPad app "UPAD" has probably the most potential of making us truly paperless. UPAD allows you to take typed or handwritten notes, edit uploaded pictures with multiple pen colors, create your own documents from preloaded templates, or importPDF's to create your own templates.

So far, I have used UPAD for students to take spelling tests, complete Everyday Math master sheets, proofread and edit their writing, draw on photos they have taken, and send all of it to parents via Email. In addition to this, I have completed all of my reading benchmarks without printing one page!

I know this seems like a lot of lists about what UPAD can do, but this is just the tip of the UPAD iceberg. You need to try it out for yourself to discover what potential UPAD truly has.

Below are several products my class has created using UPAD. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to ask.

Read this post again and much more at http://cvipads.wordpress.com

[Beau Barrett]

Jeremy- the post is finished. Let me know if there is anything you want me to change or add. http://cvipads.wordpress.com

[Jeremy Dorn]

Not at all. Sharing knowledge and helping find better tools is I believe part of why this Ning was created. Thank you very much for bringing up UPAD. It will be far better for my (and likely others) use at the elementary school level.

[Beau Barrett]

Jeremy, you are right on with the comparison of the two note taking tools. After using Note Taker HD, I see what you mean by it having more features than UPAD. However, UPAD does have a lower learning curve, comes loaded with templates, and has more of a actual "writing" feel when you use it. This is why UPAD would work best with lower grades where simplicity works best and students need to master their fined motor writing skills. I'm still getting to know Note Taker HD, but from what I can tell, once you figure out how to use all of it's features, it is by far and away a better note taking tool than UPAD. I am going to inform our upper grades at Crestview about Note taker. Would you mind if I posted this conversation on my blog, cvipads.wordpress.com?

[Jeremy Dorn]

Playing with it the Lite and then the paid version a bit. Good upgrade path from UPAD to Note Taker HD. UPAD is by far cleaner with fewer things in the way. I'd thumbs up for this on 2-5 possibly 2-7 give how some middle school students can be spaces cases. Should be fairly easy to get kids to go from a WebDAV server to GoodReader to UPAD back to GoodReader and uploaded to the completed work WebDAV. I say 2nd grade because I've had kids that young do that kind of task in a far more complex file system. Far easier to mis-save in Mac OSX Finder then even this multistep process.

It also looks like templates intened for UPAD will work in Note Taker HD. Either PDF templates or PNG images.

Note Taker HD still strikes me as feature rich, very much the higher end users App. UPAD is the clean and simple (it just works). iMovie vs Finial Cut, but without the dramatic price difference.

[Beau Barrett]

Note Taker HD? I am going to need to check this out. You are right when you say having a diverse "Export" feature is important. Thanks for the tip!

[Jeremy Dorn]

It seems like a better (read cleaner) UI then NoteTaker HD, at least from a kid perspective. I am concerned about the ease of exporting PDFs to other Apps. Hiding the "Open In..." feature under Export to Mail seems like a bad choice. Oh well at least it's there so I can't complain. If I can't get files to and from either iFile or GoodReader the App is typically useless IMO, if it doesn't have Import/Export from WebDAV on it's own.

I'd see using this in grades 2 to 3, maybe 4. From 5th and defiantly higher I'd still take NoteTaker HD for it's ability to Tag documents and other features for advanced note taking.