As a working palette during a live meeting, Note Anytime replaces slides and provides a vast active white space, limitless zooming in and out (up to 50X) and a jump feature to quickly navigate to any part of the sketch or drawing.
Note Anytime is gaining recognition as an outstanding note taking and sketching tool, but the “virtual whiteboard” functions are not as widely known. As a working palette, Note Anytime provides a vast white space, limitless zooming in and out (to 50X) and a Jump feature to quickly navigate to any part of the sketch or drawing. All of these features combined effectively replace slides and provide a vastly superior way to conduct a live presentation.
One university professor in Japan has found Note Anytime to be an indispensable tool for interactive live presentations to his students. MetaMoJi co-founder and Executive VP Hatsuko Ukigawa, was invited to interview Professor Kazuhiro Shiozawa from the Faculty of Law at Seikei University in Japan to hear his story about why Note Anytime is his productivity tool of choice for university lectures. Hear the story in his own words:
“Public speaking often conjures the image of a speaker standing on stage following a set of slides projected behind him or her. The talk is planned and the beginning and ending are set ahead of time. To truly communicate with an audience, on the other hand, doesn’t always require the help of slides. Every audience is unique and in some ways, so should be our engagement.
This is one of the reasons why I never use slides for my lectures at the university. Another reason is that I want my students to understand what I am communicating simply by listening to me. There are plenty of presentation tools out there, “Keynote” and “Powerpoint”, just to name a few, but none can really capture the unique speaking style and full sentences of a speaker.
As I mentioned earlier, slides are like story cards telling a story with a predetermined ending! During my lectures, I interact with my students and as a result, the conversation may organically evolve in new directions. That’s why I cannot write the ending of my lecture! It is an organic, living process. I build the lecture on a case-by-case depending on the needs and interests of my audience. To achieve this, I use either a white or blackboard to quickly write down some ideas.
In addition to having slides, speakers are also expected to use a projector for lectures or courses outside the university. So I tried using a projector to create a live atmosphere in my classes, but using a Mac didn’t really work. It was only when I combined the use of an iPad (or iPad mini) with the handwriting application called “Note Anytime” that I finally succeeded in creating a “live presentation”. The setup was simple: connect the iPad to the wireless network, make sure that the iPad doesn’t go into sleep mode in the middle of the class, and exit all running apps.
The first time I experimented with this setup, I had a little time before the class so I went to get some tea at Starbucks. I used Note Anytime to jot everything I wanted to be projected. One of the greatest things about this application is that everything you compose can be scaled up or down flawlessly because it uses vector graphics. This means that I can condense any part of my notes, only focus on one section, then, as the conversation evolves, I can zoom to another part of my notes. I can also take all these notes and graphic elements and show them as a whole! Note Anytime gave me that freedom.
I can also take any existing document and write on it. I can draw arrows, circle paragraphs, link elements and show their relationships. I could use my finger to do this but I prefer using a stylus called Su-pen. I am able to process the information on the screen in real time right in front of the audience. My students now experience a live presentation and the feeling of excitement that comes with it. None of this could have happened without Note Anytime or my iPad mini. This combination is the key to true live interactive presentations.”
SHIOZAWA, Kazuhiro