Keep is Google's note-taking application. You can log into Keep in a web browser at keep.google.com or use the Keep apps for iOS and Android to use it on your phone or tablet.

Key features of Google Keep:

• Write notes in a sticky note format, with the ability to add a title, or add checkboxes to notes to turn into a to-do list.
• Handwrite and draw notes either in a web browser or on mobile apps, with some handwriting recognition features.
• Change the colour of notes and add labels for organisation.
• Use the mobile apps to record voice notes that have some transcription features.
• Turn a note into a Google Doc for futher formatting by clicking a Copy to Google Docs button.
• Share notes with others by adding Collaborators.

Google Keep is good for short notes or for making handwritten or spoken notes, particularly on the go. You might use it together with Google Docs, by making brief notes in Google Keep and then copying them to Google Docs to write up more fully or add other content.

OneNote is part of Microsoft 365 and is a tool that allows you to create notebooks of notes, adding pages and formatting and using various Microsoft Office functionality. It has mobile apps for iOS and Android as well as a desktop app and a web version, but your access may depend on what kind of Microsoft Office access you have.

At the University of York, some staff with newer laptops may have OneNote available to then and linked to their Documents folder. For anyone else at York you can get OneNote for free as part of the University's Microsoft 365 subscription, but you'll need to sign up for a free personal OneDrive account to use it, as OneNote only works in partnership with OneDrive. If you're using a personal account for storage, you should not use it to store sensitive data.

Here are some of the features of OneNote:

• Create named notebooks with pages inside, making it easy to organise by topic, module, class, or piece of work.
• Use the Draw tab on compatible devices to handwrite notes with different colour pens and highlighters.
• Format notes using Office tools for lists, fonts, etc.
• Insert a range of content including tables, images, audio, and equations.

There are a range of applications available for viewing PDFs, some of which also allow you to annotate PDFs (this does not edit the PDF's content, but is similar to drawing on a piece of paper).

Your device will have a default application set for opening PDFs. This might be a web browser such as Microsoft Edge or Google Chrome, or another tool, like Adobe Acrobat Reader or Preview on a Mac. You can change your default PDF application if you want - search online for how to do it on your device if you're not sure.

You can also get other PDF viewing tools that offer different features such as annotation, including OrbitNote. Some applications with other purposes, like Paperpile for reference management, also contain PDF viewers for accessing PDFs saved in that application.

Sometimes PDFs don't open with the application you expect. When you open a PDF on the internet, for example, it may just open in your web browser if it hasn't been downloaded onto your device. If you're prefer to open your PDF with another tool, make sure you have downloaded it (there should be a link in your web browser) and then you can double click to open it in your default PDF viewer or right click to select a specific tool to open the file with.

In the resources for our note-taking applications session, we showcase a range of note-taking applications, looking at how you can annotate PDFs and other online documents:

Forthcoming sessions on :

There's more training events at:

Take a look at the above link to see a couple of examples of note-taking using a tablet and stylus.

Taking digital notes on mathematical topics comes with a whole load of additional complexities...