Note taking Software/Hardware

[cheekycharly]

Hey guys, the Head just said to me that she likes to hand write out notes and wants to either upload them somewhere or email them back. She said some teachers use Notebooks - Rocketbook UK (getrocketbook.co.uk)

 

Which I had never heard of. Has anyone got any ideas for this scenario or what good kit there is.

 

Thanks,

Edited March 6, 2023 by cheekycharly

[mavhc]

Take a photo with your phone

[slugshead]

Is that literally a small whiteboard disguised as a "notebook" and a camera app?

[cheekycharly]

Its a new realm for me this but companies are making money from it.

 

I saw these...

 

Smartpads (wacom.com)

 

Royole RoWrite Smart Writing Digital Pad

 

reMarkable – Digital Notepad

 

 

Only the reMarkable appears to have the ability to send to email.

Edited March 6, 2023 by cheekycharly

[cheekycharly]

It would seem so.

 

Is that literally a small whiteboard disguised as a "notebook" and a camera app?

[jthompson]

We've had a staff member just this week looking into purchasing a livescribe pen.

 

I think it's one of those areas where any product is going to have a degree of naffness about it.

 

Personally, camera capture into a note management app (preferably one that's already baked into a productivity suite, a la Google Keep) feels like it offers the best chance of staying useful.

[cheekycharly]

The notes might be about specific students so the notes will have to be moved to our MIS system (Cloud Based). So she will need to get it from paper to laptop I should think via email.

 

100% Agree on the naffness comment as I have read a fair few reviews on these things now and still cannot work out what is good/bad as the comments on them all vary.

[Rob_D]

Have you looked at the ReMarkable or Kindle scribe?

 

I've got a remarkable for note taking around the office/meetings, and it's been pretty great.

[TechMonkey]

I use a RocketBook. Works well and people who like that tactile feeling of writing get on with them really well.

 

A Remarkable alternative is Boox. They are full Android tablets using e-ink displays. The Kindle Scribe appears to be a missed opportunity. The issue with all these devices is that they are very expensive!

 

If you are a MS school, OneNote will take hand written notes, through the app. Alternatively get the Office Lens app and that will orientate the paper nicely for you and put it in OneNote, OneDrive, SharePoint or Teams.

[cheekycharly]

Have you looked at the ReMarkable or Kindle scribe?

 

I've got a remarkable for note taking around the office/meetings, and it's been pretty great.

 

Just looked at both of those. ReMarkable looks to be the premium product out there but when I read the reviews it was getting slated on Amazon.

 

Then I thought Amazon must have made one and sure enough found the Kindle Scribe which looks like half a product reading it.

 

 

Just reading the Evernote website currently the app I used to always uninstall as it was preconfigured bloatware.

[cheekycharly]

I use a RocketBook. Works well and people who like that tactile feeling of writing get on with them really well.

 

A Remarkable alternative is Boox. They are full Android tablets using e-ink displays. The Kindle Scribe appears to be a missed opportunity. The issue with all these devices is that they are very expensive!

 

If you are a MS school, OneNote will take hand written notes, through the app. Alternatively get the Office Lens app and that will orientate the paper nicely for you and put it in OneNote, OneDrive, SharePoint or Teams.

Rocketbook is the one the head mentioned to me but I think she said she didn't like the feel of the pen on the paper. I guess it is a different type of nib?

 

Been looking at BOOX and they look more like an alternative to a Kindle Scribe to be.

 

 

Agree with you on Amazon's missed fortune here as it seems like a little niche market with a following.

 

We are an MS school so I would love to get her to use a Surface GO/PRO but she said she had a note tablet in the past that had a shiny screen and she hated it.

 

I guess shes looking for something like the Kindle screen - Matt with the easy ability to write notes and send them to e-mail.

[altecsole]

I use a Galaxy Tab S8 and work account OneNote. This allows me to take notes anywhere and have them available on my work PC. Plus search works with my writing - which is surprising! I mainly use it to jot down thoughts, and ideas, which I can then turn into proper documentation, if required. Being able to zoom, and change ink colour is a must for me. Not a cheap solution though.

[DrCheese]

My other half bought a "Supernote" for this - She loves it compared to having mountains of physical books!

 

It feels more natural than even an iPad pro with a pencil, which still feels "away" from the physical screen (It's a bit hard to explain..)

[dhicks]

Rocketbook is the one the head mentioned to me but I think she said she didn't like the feel of the pen on the paper. I guess it is a different type of nib?

 

From the link above, I think she's used / is looking at a whiteboard (similar to what early years use), with a marker pen. Not quite the same as writing on paper, but wipe-and-reusable. If I remember correctly, all the RocketBook system actually is is a frame for your handwriting / drawing to go into with a QR code that helps orientate the page when you scan it with the app. You used to be able to simply print your own pages on A4, which your head might prefer.

 

I think most OCR systems these days will do a pretty good job of orientating a standard A4 page anyway, so you can probably use pretty much any scanning app on a phone. I think Google Drive (and probably OneDrive, but I haven't tried that recently) automatically OCRs image-based PDFs, inserting a layer of copy-and-paste-able text, so if you can get a scanning app that lets you scan a bunch of images, create a PDF and send those to Google Drive / OneDrive, that might be all you need.

[mavhc]

Just learn to type, much easier, your terrible handwriting won't OCR, and your neat handwriting is slower than typing

[TechMonkey]

From the link above, I think she's used / is looking at a whiteboard (similar to what early years use), with a marker pen. Not quite the same as writing on paper, but wipe-and-reusable. If I remember correctly, all the RocketBook system actually is is a frame for your handwriting / drawing to go into with a QR code that helps orientate the page when you scan it with the app. You used to be able to simply print your own pages on A4, which your head might prefer.

 

I think most OCR systems these days will do a pretty good job of orientating a standard A4 page anyway, so you can probably use pretty much any scanning app on a phone. I think Google Drive (and probably OneDrive, but I haven't tried that recently) automatically OCRs image-based PDFs, inserting a layer of copy-and-paste-able text, so if you can get a scanning app that lets you scan a bunch of images, create a PDF and send those to Google Drive / OneDrive, that might be all you need.

 

Rocketbooks are wipeable, if you use the correct pilot pens, but less easy to smudge than whiteboard pens.

[pete]

We have a couple of Remarkable users (they bought them) who appear to like them instead of paper notes. It's still early (few months) days yet, so unclear how much of that is "I spent X hundred on this, I'd better use it".

 

One of them did go from carrying 6 inch-thick A5 notebooks in their bag to just the Remarkable, so I suspect that one will be more likely to succeed.

[TechMonkey]

Just learn to type, much easier, your terrible handwriting won't OCR, and your neat handwriting is slower than typing

 

OCR recognises my handwriting, which is terrible. And I can write and jot much faster than I type and trying to type when annotating is particularly annoying. Typing is also a very intrusive act, especially if you are using a laptop, thereby having something between you and the person you are talking to.

[jthompson]

Just learn to type, much easier, your terrible handwriting won't OCR, and your neat handwriting is slower than typing

 

1 donf knce VVhat gou rnean,

[cheekycharly]

1 donf knce VVhat gou rnean,

 

 

Brilliant!

[Rob_D]

Below is a demo I did with someone a while back on the remarkable's OCR tech. I was pretty impressed how well it did, and kid-of surprised it even tried to turn that last line into text. I assume dedicated OCR apps could do even better.

[cheekycharly]

My other half bought a "Supernote" for this - She loves it compared to having mountains of physical books!

 

It feels more natural than even an iPad pro with a pencil, which still feels "away" from the physical screen (It's a bit hard to explain..)

 

How do you send your notes off the device?

[dhicks]

your terrible handwriting won't OCR

 

Mine will - I spent 6 weeks working at Microsoft HQ when I was a student providing them with handwriting samples. As long as your handwriting is terrible in the same way as mine you should be okay :-)

[jmak]

Rocketbook is the one the head mentioned to me but I think she said she didn't like the feel of the pen on the paper. I guess it is a different type of nib?

 

Been looking at BOOX and they look more like an alternative to a Kindle Scribe to be.

 

 

Agree with you on Amazon's missed fortune here as it seems like a little niche market with a following.

 

We are an MS school so I would love to get her to use a Surface GO/PRO but she said she had a note tablet in the past that had a shiny screen and she hated it.

 

I guess shes looking for something like the Kindle screen - Matt with the easy ability to write notes and send them to e-mail.

 

In this post you addressed all of @TechMonkey's suggestions apart from the one I was going to mention. "Lens" by Microsoft is available for Android, iOS and Windows and does a very effective job of converting a written note into a file saved in OneDrive. The ocr is quite good too.

[cheekycharly]

In this post you addressed all of @TechMonkey's suggestions apart from the one I was going to mention. "Lens" by Microsoft is available for Android, iOS and Windows and does a very effective job of converting a written note into a file saved in OneDrive. The ocr is quite good too.

 

Heard of it for the obvious reasons but never tried it. I will swing it onto my phone today as I tried a free OCR app off the android store that said it had over 1M downloads and I grabbed a bit of rough notes off my desk and took a picture of it.

 

The words it gave me back were utter nonsense and illegible.