More About Web/School 2.0 and Accountability

Digital Handouts by John Brandt and Steve Sawczyn

PDF Readers - Undiscovered Classroom Tools

It is easy enough to turn just about any proprietary file into a pdf that can be universally used. It is built into OS X, but there are many online sites which will do the job as well for any computer that doesn't have that local capability.

To read a pdf, one needs a program called a reader. Apple provides Preview with its products, but one can easily download Adobe Reader as well. There is also a neat freeware application called Skim. Each one of these does its primary task of opening up PDF documents, which is enough all in itself, and that is the only thing that most people need done.

But . . . . the simple powers within these readers are usually overlooked. While you can't alter the text in the original document, you can mark it up to your heart's delight. That means highlighting, using arrows, stickies, and even more. After the document has been annotated, it can be saved with those updates and sent to someone else, who can, in turn, add thoughts, suggestions, etc. Simple, but powerful.

Opening the File That Won't

Just received a publisher file (.pub) this morning and was unable to find a way to open it on my MacBook. To the rescue: PDF Online. It was fast, painless and accurate in its conversion. There seem to be many online sites that can help when it can't be done with what we have on our machines.



Do you have a favorite conversion tool for those files that just won't open with anything else?