hey guys welcome back to the channel if
you new here my name is Elia I'm a final
year medical student at Cambridge
University and today we're going to be
talking about how I take notes are using
the iPad and the Apple pencil in terms
of structure this videos gonna be split
up into three parts in the first part
I'm going to talk about why I use the
iPad at all as like a hybrid method of
notetaking versus handwriting or typing
up notes and the second part will talk
about exactly which iPad I use which one
I'd recommend and then I'll talk a bit
about the app note ability that I use
and why I use it and the final bit of
video will talk about exactly how I take
notes in lectures and if I have a
handout and various different use cases
and I'll show you how I use notability
as usual everything's gonna be
time-stamped in the description below so
if there's bits of the video that you
like to skip you can just skip to the
appropriate section in the timestamps
but now let's jump into it and let me
explain why I use the iPad at all for
taking notes so the way I see it there
are broadly two ways of making notes you
can either hand write your notes using
pen and paper and like knife colors and
highlighters and stuff or you can type
the notes up using an app like OneNote
or Evernote and kind of type the notes
up on your laptop as a lecture is
happening the reason I use the iPad in
the Apple pencil is because I think both
these methods have the disadvantages and
the iPad on Apple pencil method combines
the advantages of both and eliminates
the disadvantages so handwriting is
quite good because there's a lot of
evidence that if you hand write your
notes that increases retention versus
typing them up when you handwrite your
notes you can kind of categorize the
topic into spider diagrams you can use
different colors you can draw arrows you
can draw boxes you can do all these
things that mean that you're processing
more of the lecture and distilling it
into the important bits in your
handwritten notes the fact that
handwriting is quite slow so it means
you have to be selective in what you put
down which means you're more inclined to
distill and actually use your brain to
make the notes obviously the
disadvantage of handwriting is that you
end up with dreams and reams of paper
and I've got a lot of friends who hand
write their notes and they admit that
actually they don't really look at the
handwritten notes very often because you
know they're quite hard to find you've
got to go through and grab your ring
binder file from your bookshelf you've
got to open it up you've got to find the
right page it's just very cumbersome to
deal with handwritten notes kind of in
the long term typing you know top solves
this problem of accessibility
everything's all in one place everything
is synced across all your different
devices the problem we're typing that I
find is that especially if you've got
quite a fast typing speed and I imagine
most of you watching watching this video
will because we've all grown up with
computers if you have a fast typing
speed you can just like transcribe what
the lecturer is saying and you'd end up
not really taking much in so I used to
do this in first year and I'd find that
I'd make a perfect copy of what the
lecturer said including all the kind of
ideas
precedes the ohms and ours but not
really have taken anything in and I have
to read through it like a ten page
document of like you know an annoying
transcription of the lecture to actually
get what I wanted to say even when I
wasn't transcribing the lecture and a
word-for-word I found that the notes
that I would take while typing would
just be kind of a little bit of prose a
few bullet points a bit prose for a few
bullet points and it was just quite a
not very appetizing thing to do like to
look through the lecture notes and to
add stuff to it if just a bit bland and
that's why I didn't write like typing up
stuff now the reason I use the iPad and
the Apple pencil is because I think it
combines these two you get the best of
both worlds with handwriting like you
handwrite your notes on the app that I
use notability and you also have all the
search and sync functionalities that
make typing notes really effective
obviously the main disadvantage of the
iPad is that it's quite expensive this
is an iPad pro the new budget 2018 iPad
does have Apple pencil support and it
does solve some of the problems to go
that's about half the price of the iPad
pro but if you're a student and you've
got a very tight budget then this is
probably gonna be the most limiting
factor that's the price but if you're
thinking of getting an iPad if you've
got an iPad if you're getting one for
graduation or anything like that then I
think you might want to watch the rest
of this video because hopefully I'll be
giving you some tips on how I use
notability to take notes in various
different scenarios so let's talk about
now about which iPad I'd recommend as I
said this is the iPad pro I'll put the
prices over here as of kind of today
this is the iPad pro it has Apple pencil
support I bought it last year but Apple
recently released a 20-18 iPad as well
which has Apple pencil support and is
about half the price of the iPad pro egg
so the only difference between the iPad
pro and the iPad is that the pro is
slightly more powerful and the pro has a
slightly decreased distance between the
pencil and screen or like the screen and
the thing so that it feels a little bit
more like you're writing on paper
whereas would that 2018 iPad you have a
little bit of a gap most videos that
I've seen on YouTube say that you don't
really notice this gap with the 2018
iPad unless you'll like a digital artist
so if you're just buying an iPad to take
notes in school or at university I'd
probably recommend the 2018 iPad rather
than the 2017 iPad pro the 2018 ipad is
about half the price of the iPad pro but
at some point I'm gonna borrow one of my
friends 2018 iPads and we're gonna do
like a full-on comparison so if you'd
like to see that let me know the
comments and I'll expedite the process
of that happening so by this point we've
got an iPad now what app do I use the
app I used as I said is called
notability and I think notability is the
best note-taking app for the iPad
provided you have a Mac OS device that
you
your laptop or desktop the problem with
notability is that it's not available on
Windows which means if you are using
Windows you should probably use
something like OneNote I've heard very
good things about OneNote and OneNote
for Windows is very powerful OneNote for
Mac is less good but for the rest of
this video we're gonna be talking about
notability and why I like it so one of
the reasons why I like it is that it
gives you a good structure to structure
your notes and so you get dividers and
you get width and dividers you get
subjects so depending on the layout of
your course depending on how you want to
organize things that's quite an
intuitive way of doing it because it's
how we naturally split things up when
we're doing handwritten notes into
dividers like folders and then subjects
within that secondly notability is nice
because you have lots of different
colors that you can highlight stuff in
you're gonna you can write in a like a
nice shade of blue you can highlight in
like a nice shade of pink so like I
quite enjoy writing in this kind of
little dog blue hello and then if you
want to highlight you can use green
which is quite fun I also like the fact
that notability integrates nicely with
Google Drive and Dropbox so because all
of my life is on Google Drive and I want
to import a PDF it's very easy to import
straight into notability from Google
Drive you just click the import button
and you can import it directly from
Google Drive as a PDF also if I'm
scanning something like a document on my
iPhone using scannable the app I can
convert that to a PDF and airdrop it to
my iPad open straight up and notability
it's quite a seamless process from
getting notes in real life or in PDF
format into notability itself and also
another reason I like notability over
OneNote is because notability restricts
you to writing on pages the problem I
found with OneNote is that it gives you
like an infinite horizontal and vertical
canvas which means your notes can span
like a huge amount of space and that
does have its uses but I think because
we're all used to writing on paper I
think the fact that notability limits
you to writing in different pages is
really helpful it's helpful because it
kind of forces you to kind of stick to
this a4 size page of writing stuff but
it's more helpful if you want to share
your notes and sharing is really
important sharing is caring especially
in medical school we should all be
collaborating and sharing on it if a
friend of mine asks for my notes all I
have to do is export it as a PDF and I
can send it to them whereas when I used
to try and share OneNote drives you'd
have to share the link to the onedrive
thing and it would never work and if you
tried to export it to a PDF you'd end up
with this really weird shaped PDF and no
one would be able to read I'll be honest
I've not really tried many of the other
apps the ones I've tried are OneNote
notability and Evernote and of those
three I love notability the most there
are a few others like good notes and
stuff like that but there's loads of
other YouTube videos where people
compare good notes with OneNote and a
few of the other ones
that if you really want to kind of shop
for more you can find them but the one
that works for me and this worked for me
for the last like four years is
notability and I've not really looked
back now I want to talk you through some
of the use cases that I find and how I
use notability to take notes in those
use cases so let's start with lectures
lectures are a staple of all university
courses how do we take notes in lectures
ideally we want to be pre reading the
lecture notes or the slides to get an
idea of what the broad subheadings are
and then we can kind of write those
subheadings down right at the top of our
note but more often than not most
students including myself we tend not to
pre read the lecture even though we
should so most of our note-taking tends
to be in the format of light while the
lecture is happening we're taking notes
so a couple weeks ago we had a revision
lecture for radiology that I am going to
show you and I think that illustrates
some of these some of these principles
nicely radiology revision for finals
let's go all the way to the top so as
the lecturer was saying important things
I was writing stuff down this is what
writing stuff looks like and you know
you can draw it you can draw arrows you
can like color things in you can use the
highlighter to highlight things if that
helps but I was doing all of that as the
lecture was happening and that actually
just generally helps me be more engaged
with lectures otherwise I tend to find
that I fall asleep in lectures it's very
easy to fall asleep but if I'm taking
notes and I'm focused on a understanding
what the lecturer is talking about and
be distilling it into decent note format
that also looks pretty that engages my
brain enough to keep me away another
really good feature of notability is
that you can take pictures as you're
going along and include them into your
notes so radiology is quite an
image-based subject so as the lecturer
was putting up chest x-rays and stuff on
the PowerPoint I was kind of getting my
iPad up taking a photo of it and then
putting it into into notability and then
like highlighting them so as you can see
we've got quite a few chest x-rays here
we've got some annotations we've got
some some highlighting that I've done
and if I wanted to I could like draw
more box there's and you can basically
do anything after you're done with an
image you can like move it around you
can crop it and yeah you just end up
with like a good set of notes for the
lecture that can look quite pretty as
well so that's what happens in lectures
that have powerpoints we had a class
yesterday actually where we had a
handout instead and it was like a small
group session that wasn't really a
PowerPoint or just a handout we were
working through the handout now I don't
like handouts at all because I lose them
and they get crumpled up in my bag and I
don't like paper I've gone completely
paperless so what I did is I used my
phone I used the scannable
app which you can get for free on a
phone to scan in the
bits of paper the handout that we got it
was like a seven page handout I scanned
it all in using scannable converted it
to a PDF air dropped it across to my
iPad opened it up in notability and this
is what it look like we're talking about
prescribing fluids so I started off but
it's making a standard a standard page
and notability and kind of writing some
stuff down some stuff about what's good
fluid replacement ears and how to deal
with hyponatremia that's a reduced
sodium and then I added the the PDF that
I'd scanned in so as you can see this is
the handout there are some questions
here and I was able to annotate and kind
of fill in the worksheet as we were
going along in our session and now I
will have this on my iPad on my Mac on
my phone like forever thirdly I found
that the iPad is really good for making
notes in real life especially in
clinical scenarios so let's say I'm
observing a GP consultation and the
patient has mentioned something I would
like make a new note and let's say
they're talking about their like chest
pain or something and at some point they
mentioned the phrase that they've got
Epstein's anomaly so I would write this
down in my notes and I would think huh I
don't really know what Epstein's anomaly
is so there's a very easy day to get
easy way to get around that I can just
open up safari in split screen mode I
can go in Google I can type in Epstein's
and normally and then I get the results
straight there Epstein's anomaly is a
congenital heart defect in which the
septal and posterior leaflet of the
tricuspid valve are displaced towards
the apex of the right ventricle of the
heart so if that means anything to me I
can just kind of select it on the iPad
and the really cool thing is you can
just like a drag and drop you can drag
and drop text let's say I want this
image I can just grab it drop it
straight into notability what a time to
be alive this is absolutely incredible
and if I want I can just kind of draw a
box around it I can like highlight stuff
I can like change the color and draw on
a picture and I'm doing this all while
the patient is there kind of in in this
room obviously you won't be paying
attention to the patient but in these
circumstances when you do have to look
stuff up that is quite critical for you
to understand having an iPad there is so
much better than getting your phone up
because getting your phone up means that
everyone thinks you're like texting on
your phone it just looks really rude
having a phone up whereas if you have
your little iPad in your pencil out and
you're like writing stuff down and you
know actually actively paying attention
and
start making units that looks a lot more
professional looks a lot more legit
rather than getting your phone up so
that's another reason why I really like
using tablets in the workplace
environment so what else is notability
good for um it's really good for
annotating pdfs of books and just kind
of having there is a store of various
PDFs so hypothetically if I were to
download PDFs of medical textbooks
rather than by the 50-pound versions of
them well but perhaps in addition to
buying the 50 pounds version then
hypothetically I'd be able to import
those PDFs into notability and let's say
it's a multiple choice questions book
it's got some questions on it I can just
kind of answer them in on the iPad and
I'm not kind of ruining it
I can always kind of rub them out if I
have to but it's just a very easy way of
getting a lot of textbooks on to your
onto your system reading through them or
highlighting annotating doing whatever
you want on the note of annotating pdfs
I have also recently started to learn
how to read music on the piano so I
downloaded loads of sheet music and I
have it like in a sheet music folder
organized by you know classical pop
Disney humor music music from musicals
and to get some of you know sound of
music climb every mountain all this
stuff and with your Alaskan you so you
can see I've managed to download the sea
sheet music online and put it in as PDF
and actually one of the songs that I'm
learning is Jared Radnich versions of
Pirates of the Caribbean and because I'm
not very good at reading music I've been
able to annotate stuff using notability
so I can like write down the names of
the notes write on the names of the
chords and that helps me kind of learn a
bit better and finally I use it as a
general note taking up just just for
life in general so if I ever have an
idea for a YouTube video I would just
kind of make a new document about it
this is the one that I made about this
very video I had the idea on the 24th of
February 2018 apparently and I had this
sort of idea of what I would make what I
would say in the video and kind of
extended it over time and the reason I
like handwriting notes is that it like
encourages me to make more notes
normally I just type stuff out but
typing stuff out is quite boring whereas
you know putting out a plan for a
YouTube video together by like you know
writing stuff down and doing arrows and
doing boxes and making it look pretty
encourages me to actually do it and I
think of that alone is worth having the
iPad for if it encourages you to improve
your note-taking and to take more notes
about you know just general ideas
general day-to-day life that's a really
useful thing though yeah those were some
of the ways that I use notability
I hope you found that useful I think
that brings us to the end of the video
now we've talked about why I use the
iPad at all for note-taking rather than
how
writing or rather than typing notes up
which are the other tools and we've
talked about which I've heard recommend
probably the budget 2018 one that does
have Apple pencil support but I've got a
more detailed video comparing the iPad
pro and the 2018 iPad coming up at some
point soon hopefully who talked about
which app I use notability all the way
unless you have a Windows computer in
which case you probably want to use
OneNote it has broadly similar features
and we talked about a couple of use
cases like you know lectures handouts in
clinical scenarios sheet music general
ideas annotating pdfs of books all of
that stuff so I really hope you found
this either this video useful a lot of
you have been asking how I use the iPad
for note-taking because I you know use
it all the time in my study with me
videos so I hope this has given you some
insight into that if you like the video
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I'll see you in the next video bye