In the ongoing quest to promote Content-Creation on the iPad, I am going to write a short series of posts focusing on writing with the iPad. I will explore a few different apps to use when you want to write.

Hardware

There are a multitude of bluetooth keyboards available for iPad. You can see them in stores everywhere now. If you are not a fan of writing directly on the iPad screen, I would recommend trying out a keyboard if you haven’t yet. Depending on the brand and build quality, they can be useful, responsive and handy, especially if you are writing longer works.

I own the Apple Bluetooth keyboard (pictured above). This is the same one that can ship with iMacs.

Evernote

The first writing app that I will discuss is Evernote. I wrote a “Evernote for Dummies” post a while back that you can check out here.

Evernote is a no-frills app that can be extremely useful. I am currently writing this post in Evernote. A friend of mine has now begun running her whole business using Evernote. Most people I come across have heard of all the benefits of Evernote. Only a fraction of them have fully dived in and discovered how useful it can be in many ways. By no means can I completely discuss all the great tools that Evernote has, but I will provide instead a small snippet of how I use it every day.

Why is Evernote Brilliant?

1. It can capture everything for you. If you see something you like online, you can save it to your Evernote.
2. If you use multiple devices, notes are synched almost immediately between them. Start a document on your iPad, continue working on your MacBook.
3. The search function is second to none. Just type in a word, and Evernote will find that note for you.
4. There are literally an infinite amount of possible uses for Evernote. Writing notes is just one of them. Often, I use the speech function on my iPad to dictate my blogposts or lessons. I can then later edit and fine tune them on a different device.
5. The Evernote iPad app continues to make strides in ease of use and its user-interface. As soon as you open the app, the search bar opens up.
6. If you are an organized person, you can group all your notes into notebooks. File them into categories as you wish. However, if you don’t want to do this, you definitely don’t have to. Keep all the notes in one folder and just tag each note with a #. This will help with your search in the future.

Above: Evernote on iPad and iPhone 6 Plus

Mobile is the Future – And the Future is Here

I love the fact that you are not tied down to your computer with Evernote. With whichever device you may have at the time, you can edit your notes on the fly. If you happen to have an extra few minutes to work on something, you can even use your iPhone to add those notes in. You don’t have to wait until you get home to your computer.

Workflow:

In doing research for your writing, you can clip anything you see on the web using the web clipper, a new iOS 8 feature that is extremely simple to use: Just tap the share icon and select “Evernote. You can not only clip webpages, but PDFs, images or other documents that you can store on your device.

Evernote is a great way to organize your ideas for your writing. Ideas can come flowing wherever you are. Make lists for brainstorming. Create a list of related articles to support your arguments. Need some help writing different types of works, such as essays, speeches and blogposts? Check out goodwritinghelp.com for lots of free tips on how to improve your writing.

My Work Example

In my teaching, I use specific plays for each of the five grades that I teach. Each play is in video form. After I show the plays to my students, I ask very specific questions to assess their comprehension. During the showing of the play, I take notes on each character: their gender, size, costumes etc. I save every play in Evernote and therefore it is only a search term away every time I want to refer to that list of notes. It takes literally two seconds to access any given play at any time.

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Conclusion

If you are writing simple notes, texts or paragraphs, then Evernote is a great choice for you. The simplicity of the app should not be mistaken for any lacking features. Evernote is feature-rich, and a lot of Evernote-owned (Scannable, Skitch) and third party apps (Pocket, IF, Scanner Pro) tie very well together with it. Spend some time giving it shot for a few weeks. I guarantee you will appreciate what it can do for you! Let us know how you like it in the comments!