Tablet writing program

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Permalink Reply by AnaCely on April 4, 2009 at 7:01pm

Hello... I got a Wacom tablet too... the bamboo fun one, and I been playing with it for a while (4 hrs straight)... What I used that worked 100% was the power point... it didn't convert to text but if u want to show something to ur class or highlight something at a presentation etc it works wonders!

I was testing a class using Geogebra, a webpage and powerpoint as my whiteboard and it was fast, accurate and super easy to switch and work on.

I'll check later if u find a FREE writing tool that works with the wacom tablets.

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Permalink Reply by Tammy Moore on April 4, 2009 at 7:29pm

I use my Wacom constantly throughout the day.

Vista has a lot of tablet compatible fetaures built right in to the OS. There is a journal and handwriting recognition/text conversion tool built right in to the desktop that should activate one you get your driver installed for your Wacom.

If you have your Wacom on a PC you will love OneNote 2007. It will convert handwriting to text, draw, handwrite notes, and even synch notes to audio and webcam recording of lectures (the stroke will get a box around it when you reach the point in the recording when that stroke was added or you can reverse it and click on the stroke and go right to the place in the recording when you made it. I LOVE my Wacom and my OneNote! I will be giving a OneNote demo to some of our parents on Saturday. If you are interested, let me know and you can join in.

Another Miscrosoft product that work great with Wacom is Outlook 2007. You can add annotations to e-mail or even create an e-mail completely in handwriting and drawings if you wish. I needed to get a patch to get Wacom and Outlook to get along when I first started using the two together on my Vista machine. It had something to to do with the search tool and cataloging the metadata for it or something.

Elluminate also works great with a tablet. I teach in Elluminate and it makes it so easy to teach when you need to write on the slides. It is a huge improvement over trying to write or draw with a mouse.

Paintshop Pro and all the Adobe products (Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, pdf, etc.) work with a Wacom.

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Permalink Reply by Mike Mules on April 4, 2009 at 9:07pm

I would second OneNote as a fantastic program. I use it all the time for my school and my personal work. It is also heavily used with our Y7s and 8s who all have tablet laptops.

You shouldn't need to get any special software though, if you have Office 2007. To draw/handwrite you can use the Review Tab, and click on "Start Inking" in Powerpoint, Word or Excel. With tablet laptops as well, if you hover the stylus just over the cursor, you get the option of entering a word using an on-screen keyboard, or writing words into an input window which auto-converts them to text. I am not sure, however, if the wacom will have the same feature.

Microsoft have on their website somewhere a whole bunch of free tablet applications: the Experience Pack and the Education Pack for Tablet PC. They include a really good painting/art program, snipping tool (for XP, as Vista already has this), puzzles and games, and a nifty flash-card program . Also, Microsoft has a (free) beta product called InkSeine which I use quite frequently instead of a whiteboard in my classes.

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Permalink Reply by Bruce Cohen on April 5, 2009 at 5:02am

eNoteFile allows you to write on your computer (www.enotefile.com).
It will convert handwriting to text and search for both handwritten and typed keywords.
The filing system and easy thumbnail navigation are the advantages to eNoteFile.
The nice thing is it's free too.
It also offers seamless one-click synchronisation if you want to automatically backup your notes, remote access on another computer or share with colleagues/students in real time.
Regards,
Bruce

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