My favourite lectures are handwritten ones. Not only do they look more personal than typed ones, but also do they give much for flexibility in presenting complex content, and they are also much more fluently created. This app is the brilliant for creating such lectures. Let me elaborate. Usually when I give a presentation, I first write some handwritten paper notes with the key content and equations I would like to present. Then, I use these notes as a guide for the actual presentation, either on a chalkboard, or typed up for slides. This app removes the second step. You simply write all the stuff you want to talk about directly with the Apple Pencil. This content is usually too dense to present. So what the app allows you is to turn such a dense slide into a step-by-step presentation, simply by defining key frames that one jumps between in presentation mode. Sounds complicated, but is a lot of fun! You can tell that the author of this app uses it for their own teaching, as many things are fine-tuned to typical presentation issues. You can use your finger as a laser pointer. You get a mini-preview of the next step in the presentation. There is a grid to guide your handwriting that you see, but not the students, who also don’t see the interface of the app. It is near perfect. My only issue is that the app exports as bitmap PDF, which tends to be huge, rather than vector PDF (which is the internal format anyway). However, I don’t usually export as PDF, as I present straight from the app. This gives me the opportunity to use the pointer, and to write on the slides in real time as well. It is the ultimate flexibility to present. For me, the real power of this approach shows when presenting lengthy step-by-step calculations. A Tipp-Ex white paint allows me to remove previous steps (think of the sponge in a chalkboard presentation) to simplify the equations and animate the development of the maths in a simple and fun way. It’s difficult to understand the power of this approach before actually playing with it, but I am convinced that this is a great tool for science teachers at school and uni level alike. It might also be interesting in other subjects, but that is not my expertise.
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