Math instructor looking for opinions on switching from iPad to Surface

[RickTaylor]

I’m looking for peoples’ experience and opinions.

I’m a math instructor at a community college. I’ve been teaching using a 12.9” iPad pro for several years. I use it as a virtual white board. If teaching in person, I connect it to a projector; if online, I connect it to Zoom. I also use it for writing notes, drawing diagrams and graphs, and copying and pasting images from one source to another, to place them in handouts and exams. It works great.

But I can’t help but wonder if the grass might be greener elsewhere. I use a MacBook, for typing exams and such using Lyx (a Latex front end), and this means I’m copying files back and forth between two different operating systems. Wouldn’t it be more natural, for example, to have my GoodNotes files that I put into exams in the same file system where the exam is composed? GoodNotes does have it’s own file system which works fine, but I don’t see it in iCloud (perhaps I don’t know the place to look). It seems to be separate from the Mac’s file system. And GoodNotes is great, but what if it’s discontinued some day? I’d have to export all my files to PDF format, and I’d no longer be able to edit them.

It’s for this reason I’m tempted to try using a Microsoft Surface Pro Studio. It would be one device I could do everything I do on the iPad and MacBook, while keeping all my files in one system.

My hesitation is my current system mostly works fine, at least for now. If I switched, I’d have to find an alternative to GoodNotes, and GoodNotes works so well. The obvious alternative candidate would be OneNote. But unlike OneNote, GoodNotes is PDF based. It naturally divides things into 8.5”x11” pages. It makes it easy to export my notes for students. And I can do things like, import a copy of a textbook, and then during a lecture if a student asks a question, go to the textbook, use the pencil to crop and screen shot the question, and paste it into the lecture notes for students to see. Or I can export the image, copy it to the MacBook, and use it in a document. So would I be able to do similar things in OneNote? Would It have features of its own I might want? I've heard one can open up a space in the middle of a document pushing things down, which could be very helpful on occasion. Or is there an alternative to OneNote on Windows I should try?

I’d be very interested to hear other peoples’ experiences and opinions on these matters.

 

[Turnpike]

I've switched TO the Apple universe after many many years with Windows... and One Note has been my "daily driver" of a program where I did 95% of all my work, 12+ hours a day, 7 days a week for years- I bought it for $75 or so as a stand alone program back before it was free. Once I moved to Mac, and after trying every alternative to OneNote I discovered (and love) GoodNotes 5. I still use the Windows stuff sometimes, depending on what office I'm working in where I am helping former co-workers catch up on their work, and I have to say that there is no comparison to the smooth inter-working of OneNotes on all my devices (I use it on an iMac, iPad, and look at it on my iPhone) compared to all the other similar programs (even Notability) and the quality and dependability of both the devices and connections of Apple systems and the devices/computers.

Of course this is just my experience and my opinion, but I thought it was worth weighing in since I'm forced to go back to how I used to do things with Windows stuff and am constantly reminded of the difference in a very real way.

If I'd suggest anything, it would be to continue using Apple and GoodNotes 5 and just fine tuning your skills with those, watching videos on tips for GoodNotes 5 which makes it almost magical: if you've never sat and watched GoodNotes 5 tips videos on Youtube for an hour or two while practicing what they show you, you're in for a treat, and in my opinion that will satisfy that itch that's causing you to think there might be a better system out there.

 

[Slartibart]

You are aware that Apples Pages offers inline use of MathML and LaTeX-commands? Together with the edit abilities of the integrated PDF preview in iPadOS 15 - open the side bar on the left you can rearrange, delete, extract, or add pages via drag&drop (or rotate) - split view and/or the dictation feature I prepare my lectures or seminars in bioengineering.

I basically start with a Pages document, use the inline LaTeX for equations or e.g. showing a solution, drag&drop e.g. single pages from a PDF or pictures directly from Photos, PDF preview, or a browser window.

To edit PDF content I use Affinity Designer and Vectornator.
Larger LaTeX documents I set with Overleaf. Data or function plots I generate with Carnets.

Additionally it is easy in Pages to add e.g. text from MS Word documents and if needed a PDF containing everything is easily exported.
At anytime there is access to Apple’s Files (therefore USB-sticks or SSDs), automatic sync with iCloud, if wanted dropbox&Co. as well.

If I get content from colleagues (who use e.g. Goodnotes or Office 365) to integrate it is mostly PDF- or Word-based. For the occasional scanned document (JPEG, TIFF, PNG) I use the iPadOS 15 Live Text-feature to extract editable Text or just place the image (using Pages mask feature).

Presentations I prepare in Apple’s Keynote integrating or generating the required parts using the apps/roughly&superficial sketched work flow above.

Yes, I have access to Macs - but I actually prefer my iPP for presentations for lectures/seminars/conferences wether “real world“ or online, YMMV.