TechTuesday: Taking Notes with Adobe Reader

When professors post PDF lecture slides before class, students have many options on how to take notes. Some students prefer to print out the slides and take handwritten notes, while other students prefer to use their laptop to take notes. Even within the laptop note-taker group, there are several different ways to take notes. One great option is to use Adobe Reader X commenting and markup tools (Student using Apple’s Preview can find similar tools under the “Tools – Annotate” menu).

The first step in using Adobe Reader X commenting and markup tools is to locate the lecture slides on Trunk and save them to your computer. Select “Save Link As” and save the document as an Adobe Acrobat Document. If you do this before class, all you have to do when you get to class is open the previously saved document and begin taking notes!
The sticky note tool allows you to add text notes anywhere on the slides. To begin adding notes to your page, select the sticky note tool (yellow note icon) in the Comment & Markup toolbar across the top of the page. Click where you would like to place the note and begin typing. You can add as many notes per page as you would like, and each note will include the time and date of the last edit. Notice that your typed text appears as pop-up notes and that you can drag your notes to anywhere on the page. This feature is particularly helpful when labeling features in a complex diagram or chart. Don’t worry – when you close your pop-up notes (by clicking the minimize button in the upper-right corner of the pop-up note or clicking outside the pop-up note), your text is not lost. At anytime you can go back and edit or delete a sticky note comment.

Next to the sticky note tool in the toolbar is the text highlighter tool. Just as the name suggests, this tool allows you to highlight text on the slides. Simply select the tool and begin highlighting. And of course, when adding notes and highlighting text, don’t forget to save your edits periodically (Go to File – Save). You certainly want your notes and highlights to be there when it comes time to study for the test!

– Jeff