Top Note Taking Apps, Organized by the Feature You're Looking For
By on October 12, 2012 / apps for disabilities aspergers autism EdApps EdTech Education Apps elearning Evernote flipclass free apps free education apps iBallz iPad iPad organization iPadEd iPads in the Classroom mlearning Notability note taking apps note taking apps for iPad organizing app Paperport Notes Pinterest Simplenote Sound Note SoundNote SpringPad / 0 Comments
The most ubiquitously popular of the bunch: Evernote – Free – The most well known of the bunch, Evernote allows you to capture text notes, audio recordings, photos, and web clips and arrange them into neatly organized notebooks. Evernote offers a host of organizing features, including tagging notes with keywords and notebooks can be synced and accessed through an iPhone, iPad, or desktop app, or through their site. This app is great for those that want a scrapbook feel (great for bringing in information from a variety of sources) with high organization.
Most
robust free app for taking lecture notes: Paperport Notes – Free – This great
free note taking app allows you to annotate over imported documents or
documents from the web, type or write freehand notes, highlight sections, and
most notably dictate notes to text. You
can sync notes with Dropbox, Box.net, and other apps for easy access and
sharing – not bad at all for a free app!
The most visually pleasing layout: SpringPad – Free – Pitched as an
Evernote-meets-Pinterest app, SpringPad gives 
you much of the functions of
Evernote with the visually oriented layout of Pinterest. SpringPad lets you add photos, to-do lists,
links, locations and more to board-like notebooks via a button on your browser
or manually through their iPhone and iPad apps or web portal. You can share specific notebooks with other
people or add them as co-creators, allowing you to share content on a specific
subject to a specific person rather than the whole shebang. The app also has loads of other robust
functions (for example if you import a location, it adds details like address
and open hours), and is great for allowing teachers to share robust
informational content with students, or for student paper and project
collaboration, but would fall flat for students attempting to use it as a means
for lecture notes.
The best inexpensive app for recording lectures while taking
notes: Notability –
$.99 – The most standout function of this app is that it allows you to record
audio and take notes via handwriting or typing simultaneously – great for
recording a lecture while taking notes. Notes
can be organized by subject or category and exported and synced through
Dropbox.
The best app for recording audio while taking notes period: SoundNote - $4.99 – A hefty price by app
standards, SoundNote takes the audio recording function to the next level. This app not only allows you to record audio
while you take notes, but you can click on a piece of text and replay the audio
that was recorded while it was written.
Oh if I had only had this while I was in school! Autistic, Asperger’s, and other special needs
students find this app particularly useful.
For those that like to keep it simple: Simplenote - Free – As the name suggests,
this is a very simple, unobtrusive, user friendly notetaking app, with well
working basic functions. Only drawback
here is that notes can only be exported as email text.
