Tech Tip Tuesday- PDF Expert

Hi guys,

Just a quick tip to make your life a LITTLE bit easier...

A quick search of PDF documents on my computer yielded over 4,000 items- yikes! I like to have a digital copy of everything, so I am constantly scanning and saving documents into my files. Also, I am more than a little compulsive about saving interesting articles or ideas because, goodness knows, I just MIGHT need them again.

In graduate school, I amassed a large number of PDFs that I needed to be able to mark up, label, or annotate in some way or another. To that end, I quickly found a need for a way to save, organize, annotate, highlight, or mark-up my PDF files.

Introducing: PDF Expert.

PDF Expert is a paid app that allows you to import, save, and organize PDF documents. Currently, it is not offered as a cross-platform app, so it is only available on iOS devices like the iPhone and iPad. It's especially nice because it is really easy to access all of your documents on the go.

Now, while I do love a good paperback novel on occasion, I do not particularly enjoy moving them around or storing them, so in my recent semi-nomadic years, I have become a pretty heavy e-book consumer. I have found this to be especially true for classroom resources and professional development books. Personally, I like to plan at home, in my pajamas, with an enormous cup of coffee. That being said, I HATE it when I get home and realize that my math resource book with the awesome lesson on mental math strategies is still in the classroom, so I generally try to purchase teaching resource e-books. Also, who doesn't love Scholastic's Teacher Express Dollar Deals ebook sale. I don't believe that it is currently on, but when that sale hits- I go cuh-razy.

In PDF Expert, I can go in and mark, highlight, or take notes on specific items in the e-books. I use this feature to add specific details or notes about a lesson plan or activity for the following year.

Also, many of the Common Core resources that are issued by our district and state are in a PDF format. While I could always print these documents, many of them are rather lengthy and I prefer not to add yet another binder to my shelf, so I save them and mark them up online.

There are other resources that perform these same tasks on the market and $10.00 seems pretty pricy for an app, but I use it frequently enough that I feel like it is a solid investment. Also, PDF Expert has great synching capabilities and it is easy to import documents from most cloud based storage services.

I will be sharing with you how I have utilized many different Pinterest-TeachersPayTeachers resources paperlessly using this app.

Stay connected,