Professor Henry Hecht Uses an iPad to Write on Slide Presentations

By IT Admin | April 17, 2012 at 11:11 am

Professor Henry Hecht stands in front of his Depositions class and displays a sample deposition question on the classroom projection screen. He asks his students to consider whether the question is objectionable. After they respond, he picks up his stylus and underlines the objectionable parts of the question, identified by his students, in bright red so that his students can easily focus on the words or phrases that are being discussed and why they are objectionable. But instead of writing on a transparency and projecting it with a document camera, Professor Hecht writes directly on the screen of his iPad and what he writes shows on the screen.

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Vice President Al Gore Video Conferences with Students at UC Berkeley Law

By IT Admin | April 5, 2012 at 10:23 am

Co-taught by Professor Steven Weissman and Governor Jennifer Mulhern Granholm, Renewable Energy and other Cleaner Fuels, grapples with the complexity of a energy policy. As a class they discuss the current state of energy policy and law on the local, state and national level. Students learn about alternative energy, along with emerging areas and work toward producing a comprehensive, and practical national energy policy.

On Monday April 2^nd, Vice President Al Gore joined the class as a guest speaker using our advanced classroom video conferencing tools. . Vice President Gore was able to see and speak naturally with students in the class from his home office in Nashville, Tennessee. After his lecture, students were able to ask questions to the Vice President and discuss some of his lecture points.

For more information on how you can have guest speakers video conference with your classroom, contact John-Mark Ikeda, at jikeda@law.berkeley.edu .

iPad App Review : Notability

By IT Admin | April 3, 2012 at 10:46 am

Write on PDF’s or just jot down notes all while presenting in class. Notability is a easy to learn and versatile app for the iPad. In Notability you can take notes just like you would on a pad of paper. If you have a stylus for the iPad it feels natural to write our your class notes with the pen tool in Notability . Instead of erasing everything when you run out of space, like on a whiteboard, you can just add a new page. This makes it easy to go back to notes during class and to email all your days notes to students afterward. You can even record audio while you write. These features make Notability a good whiteboard replacement app. Connect it to the projector in class and you don’t have to leave your seat or podium.

Beyond using this app as a whiteboard replacement, you will also find its ability to write on PDFs to be very useful. Open a PDF in notability and you can underline text, highlight sections and add notes or new content. Go over sections in the assigned reading, make corrections or draw diagrams to help highlight and analyze the text.

Save your Powerpoint as a PDF, and Notability will allow you write on your slide presentations. Dissect part of a quote, add notes or just insert a blank slide and start writing. The simplicity and versatility of Notability has led Professor Henry Hecht to uses it in his Deposition course. Professor Hecht writes on his slide presentations during class, adding notes and underlining important text.

Notability does have some drawbacks though. You have to convert all your Powerpoint files to PDF before you can even open them in the app. The keyboard sometimes will pop up while you are navigating around unless you “lock it”.To be honest, it would be nice if we could turn off the typing feature all together. Also new pages are always in portrait orientation, which doesn’t work as well when adding blank pages to presentations. For the price though, Notability provides a fairly simply and versatile feature set. It works well after you learn a couple small quirks and can be an effective presentation tool in the classroom.

Notability costs $1 on the app store and is well worth the price. If you would like to try it out, stop by our office, rm 355. We test out apps, provide consultations and train faculty to meet their teaching goals through technology. For more information on this app or any other apps for teaching, contact John-Mark Ikeda at jikeda@law.berkeley.edu.

Monthly Archives: April 2012