There are tons of PDF apps out there but not all of them walk their talk. Only few provide really transformative user experience. When I talk about transformative experiences in the context of technology use in education I am primarily referring to SAMR model. The goal of integrating technology in our teaching, as I have repeated stated here in educatorstechnology.com, is to create radical transformative experiences where technology is not used as an add-on or a replacement of old traditional ways of teaching, but rather as a catalyst to drive deep and meaningful learning.
The PDF apps I curated for you today, I believe, can be used in a transformative way to enhance your overall productivity. The original list published here 4 years ago contained 9 apps but upon revisiting it this month (November, 2021) I decided to omit some titles from this list cutting it down to only five apps. Some of the services provided by these apps include: read and edit PDFs, sign and request signatures from others, fill out forms, annotate PDFs, add highlights and comments, and many more.
1- Adobe Acrobat Reader
A great app that lets you read, edit, and convert PDFs. Some of the main features it provides include:
- “Open and view PDFs with the free Adobe PDF viewer app.
- Search to find text fast in your PDF documents.
- Share files for commenting or viewing.
- Collect comments from multiple people in one file online.
- Add PDF notes and comments, including sticky notes and highlights.
- Write on PDF documents by adding text or drawings.
- Subscribe to edit text and images directly in your PDF.
- Fix a typo or add a paragraph with the paid PDF editor feature.
- Easily fill in PDF forms with the form filler feature.
- E-sign documents using your finger or stylus.
- Sign in to your free account to store and access files across devices.
- Access all your files by linking online storage accounts, like Microsoft OneDrive, Dropbox, or Google Drive
- Access scanned PDFs that you’ve captured using the free Adobe Scan app.
- Open your scans in Adobe Acrobat Reader to fill, sign, comment, and share.”
2- Notability
This is another excellent app that you can use to ” take notes, sketch ideas, annotate PDFs, mark-up photos, record lectures, provide audio feedback and more. Some of its features include:
- Work with a variety of note-taking, journaling, and drawing tools like ink, highlighter, text, and audio.
- Mark up imported textbooks, documents, lecture slides, class assignments, and images.
- Instantly create notes from a selection of templates with customizable spacing and backgrounds.
- Explore endless ideas with continuous page scroll.
- Add photos, GIFs, web pages, and more.
- Record and playback audio
- Handwrite and sketch naturally
- Present ideas in full screen without distracting toolbars when connected to an external display.
- Work with two notes side-by-side.
- Import PDFs, DOCs, PPTs, images, GIFs, and more.
- Easily create searchable multi-page PDFs using the built-in Document Scanner.”
3-PDFElement Lite
Use this app to ” read, edit, annotate, convert and sign PDF files on the go. Some of its features include:
- Font recognition
- Change font, size, color, and more.
- Single line or paragraph can be selected to move, cut, copy, paste or delete.
- Add text box, text call-out, stamps, freehand drawing and eraser.
- Highlight, underline or strike through context.
- Directly edit your PDF forms with ease;
- Sign your forms with handwriting signature
- Combine different format files into a new PDF.
- Import files from cloud storage including Dropbox,Google Drive,OneDrive,Box, or via WiFi wireless transfer.
- Quickly snap a photo of anything into a PDF and share with others.
4- PDF Expert: Reader, Editor App
PDF Expert lets you read, annotate, edit, and fill out PDF forms. Some of its features include:
- “Quickly open PDF documents from email, the web, or any app that supports “Open In…”
- Enable full-text search, scroll, zoom in and out.
- Mark important info in books or documents with the first class annotation tools: highlight, underline, strikethrough and others.
- Insert predesigned stamps such as Approved, Not Approved, Confidential and more.
- Add comments to the texts you read using sticky notes and drawing tools.
- Fill out any PDF forms with interactive fields such as text fields, checkboxes and radio buttons.
- Edit or modify existing text. The font, size, and opacity of the original text are automatically detected, so you can make edits easily.
- Easily add, replace and resize images in your PDFs. Or change a logo or a graph. PDF Expert will handle those edits easily.
- Use e-signatures to sign contracts and agreements on the go.
- Sign documents with signatures synchronized across all your devices: Mac, iPhone, iPad.”
5- iAnnotate 4
iAnnotate allows you to read, annotate, and share PDFs, Microsoft Office files, images and web pages! Some of its features include:
- “Annotate: Choose from the pen, highlighter, typewriter, stamp, straight-line, note, underline, strikeout, photo, voice recording, arrow, rectangle, circle, and date stamp tools.
- Customize: Drag and drop tools to your custom toolbars. Swipe between toolbars, or open the Toolbox to access all your tools.
- Access: Connect with Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive (including OneDrive for Business) or open PDFs directly from email and other apps.
- Search: Search documents in your local library and throughout your cloud storage.
- Share: iAnnotate saves your markups directly to the PDF, so they can be viewed and edited in external PDF readers.
- Web markup: Open a web capture tab and find the site you want to mark up. iAnnotate will convert it to a PDF for annotation.
- Two documents: Work on two documents side-by-side, for even greater productivity.
- Create: Create brand new PDFs with blank, lined, or graph-paper pages.
- Secure: Full support for the iOS Data Protection and Keychain functions.
- Modify: Add, delete, rotate, and rearrange pages in your documents.”
