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How to use the Smart Annotation tools in the Pages App on iPad

27th January 2020

Jacob Woolcock

1:41

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Discover the powerful and often overlooked Smart Annotations feature in Pages, as showcased in this informative video. Learn how to use Apple Pencil or Logitech Crayon to add dynamic annotations to documents, which intelligently move with the text as you edit. This tutorial not only explores how to annotate, highlight, and add comments but also suggests practical classroom applications, like peer reviewing student work, enhancing the interactive learning experience.

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Smart Annotations in Pages is a great feature that you may not even know exists. Whenever you’ve got a document open, if you tap the screen with your Apple Pencil or Logitech Crayon, you’ll get two options. One of them will insert a drawing and it’ll create a box to contain that drawing inside, but the other one, called Smart Annotations, will let you scribble notes all over the document you’re working on. This could be a piece of your own work or perhaps a child’s work in your class. You can then circle, highlight, annotate with arrows, and add notes and comments, just like you would do on a piece of paper. But the really amazing thing about this feature is that if you then go back by pressing down in the top corner and continue editing your document, those annotations will move in line with the text. For example, if you highlight some words and those words move down to a different line, the highlighter will move with it. Just the same, if you circle or scribble next to words or sentences, they’ll move along with the rest of the document. You can tap onto one of these with your finger and delete it if you wish, and at any time, you can use a pencil or crayon to go back into the annotation and adjust it as you need to. This includes rubbing out or perhaps changing the notes that you’ve made on that piece of text. Why not use it with your students? Get one child to write a piece of writing in Pages and get another child to peer review it using the Logitech Crayon, by scribbling notes and suggestions on that piece of work for the first child to go back and look at. There are loads of uses for this great tool, built right into Pages.

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