Using The iPad For Teaching — Tips From An Apple Distinguished Educator
Two-time JUNO-nominee Shirantha Beddage is a baritone saxophonist, composer, and educator from Toronto, Canada. His newest album, Momentum, featuring drummer Will Kennedy of the Yellowjackets, was nominated for Jazz Album of the Year (Solo) at the 2017 JUNO awards. His compositions have earned him the Galaxie Rising Star Award at the Montreal Jazz Festival, placements on the Golden Globe-winning TV series “Fargo”, and an honorable mention in the Canadian Songwriting Competition. He is currently the Head of Theory in the Bachelor of Music program at Humber College, where he teaches classroom courses, ensembles, and private lessons.
His engagement in teaching was honored by Apple that named him “Apple Distinguished Educator“.
Shirantha recently took the time to talk with us about some of his teaching workflows that heavily rely on GoodNotes.
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 on his iPad. 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 iPad 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.“
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 iPad 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.“
GoodNotes is the best app for teachers that want to integrate technology into their classroom without overwhelming their students. This way, digital technologies are leveraging the content facilitated during the lessons and are not the center of attention. It is available for iPad and iPhone on the App Store and at a discounted price through the Apple Volume Purchase Program for Educational Institutions.
