The dangers of committing to one technology in the classroom – Evernote’s Penultimate

Posted on December 2, 2014 Updated on January 19, 2015

In the modern classroom, there can’t be many of us who only use the white/blackboard and the textbook for every lesson. To a greater or lesser extent, the convenience and liberating nature of the digital age has become part of our classroom workflow. For more than two years now, I have shunned the board and used Penultimate (since bought by Evernote) on an iPad, put through the VGA connection to the projector. It was great, basically like a digital board where I could write but have other media baked in too. I had all my textbook pages scanned in there, I could write on the scans and add new blank pages for corrections. It had this great ‘drift’ feature that allowed you to zoom in and the zoom focus would follow at the speed you wrote. Best of all, what was projected was just the page itself, so no one in class could see me changing pens/colours or zooming in for the drift. It wasn’t perfect, but it was easily the best of the ten-or-so note apps I’ve used. You notice I am using the past tense here. Unexpectedly, a few weeks ago, the app was updated. With the new changes, Evernote didn’t so much drop the ball as jettison it directly into the sun. Read the rest of this entry »