PaperHelper: iPad App Splits the Screen for Document Writer and Web Browser Combo
PaperHelper is an interesting and impressive iPad app from a pair of teenage developers. It offers a writing app and web browser app rolled into one and seems to be aimed primarily at students writing essays. Here’s a little slice of its App Store intro:
Writing essays just got simpler! With PaperHelper, You can have your source and paper right next to each other.
PaperHelper uniquely splits your iPad screen in half providing you with a Internet Browser and a Document writer.
The initial promo email for the app caught my attention because it was a well-written approach from a 17 year old who is the co-CEO of RumbleApps, the publisher of PaperHelper. The other co-CEO is 16. As impressive as that is, it wouldn’t generally be enough to write about an app – but a quick look at the App Store page for PaperHelper had me interested enough to install the app and take a look. And I’m glad I did.
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ReplyDeleteTo its credit, the built in "share" functionality drops the web address in the bottom of the document, rather than moving text over.
ReplyDeleteI do this on my own computer. I even added another monitor for more room.
Just wait until Siri can scour the internet for sources and cobble together a selection of text for your topic. "Siri, I need 5 pages of text on Basket Failure Modes, please include 5 sources including 2 journal articles."
My guess is Siri doesn't respond, "I'm sorry Dave. I'm afraid I can't let you do that."
As with many tools, it looks like something that could be very handy in responsible hands, and disastrous, or at least a severe temptation, in irresponsible ones.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure an ipad is the best environment in which to do this, however; even taking into account the ability of younger eyes to see smaller print, writing in half of a small screen is likely to encourage choppy, if not patchwork-plagiarized, writing. As I've been telling students for the last few years, writing for the small screen is a useful skill, and one they will probably need to learn, but it's not the same thing as writing for -- or reading on -- a c. 8 x 10 page or the screen equivalent, and they weill need to understand the differences between the environments/formats, and being able to function in both.
"As with many tools, it looks like something that could be very handy in responsible hands, and disastrous, or at least a severe temptation, in irresponsible ones."
DeleteWhich is of course, the story of Alfred Nobel's dynamite. Do you suppose in a few decades we will have the RumbleApp Prize for World Peace?
Oh shit, they know how to do this already.
ReplyDeleteHow is "providing you with a Internet Browser and a Document writer" a "well-written approach?"
ReplyDeleteJeezus.
So it makes plagiarism easier??? Or dissertation-writing less frustrating?
ReplyDelete"[T]echnology isn’t intrinsically good or evil; it’s how it’s used. Like the Death Ray." -Professor Hubert Farnsworth, Futurama
DeleteAnd it's free today! :p
ReplyDelete