Day 7 – Using Skitch Touch on the Surface RT
Surface RT for Teachers –Teaching and Learning with a Windows 8 Tablet
Continuing my journey of exploring apps to be used in the classroom with the Surface RT I have discovered Skitch Touch for annotating images, screenshots, and photos.
Skitch Touch is a very simple program but for teachers it serves the key purpose of drawing the attention of the student to an area on the screen. It is very easy to use and only took 30 seconds to download and install from the Windows Store. It is produced by Evernote and once the install is complete you get a small ad that says “Skitch is better with Evernote” Evernote is a very popular online note-taking program.
I have used Evernote in the past but I have become a 100% convert to OneNote since I began using Windows 8 tablets. A big reason for my conversion is the excellent digital Pen I use every day with the Surface Pro. Using OneNote also allows the elimination of yet another userid and password to keep track of, Evernote requires a separate account sign-in.
Since OneNote uses my Microsoft Account on the Surface RT I already have access to all my OneNote notebooks. Because my notebooks are associated with my Microsoft Account all of my notebooks that are saved to SkyDrive are available to me on the Surface RT. That means that no matter what device I use I have access to all my SkyDrive files if I use the same MS account. This is a big plus for the Surface RT as my companion device. I will have much more to say about OneNote in a future post.
Back to Skitch Touch, you can annotate photos that you take with the camera on the Surface RT. Or, you can open any image for editing, like a map or screenshot that you have stored in your Pictures folder. Since the RT has file management built-in you can navigate the file structure on the RT to get to the images of your choice and edit with Skitch Touch.
Since the Surface RT also has a camera you can take a picture and then immediately annotate it with Skitch Touch. Imagine you are a Biology Teacher on a field trip and you take several pictures with the Surface RT. When you get back to the classroom you can open Skitch Touch, access your camera roll, and immediately begin drawing arrows to features you want students to know about. You can very easily add text and pointer arrows to get your lesson across. Below is an example of a Catalpa Tree with seed pods annotated with Skitch Touch.
The above example was taken with the Surface RT camera and annotated with Skitch Touch, very easy to do. The Surface RT camera in my experience is certainly not the best camera I have ever used coming in at 2.0 megapixels, but it is fine for many everyday classroom tasks. If you find the Surface RT camera a bit lacking you can always use a separate high-quality digital camera and import the photos into the Surface RT to use with Skitch Touch.
The Surface RT comes with a USB 2.0 port!
If you have a USB to SD card adapter you can easily access your digital camera photos from the RT’s USB port. No need to upload/download them to and from Dropbox and no need to plug the Surface RT to a different computer to copy photos on and off the device.
Skitch Touch is a simple but powerful app for enhancing visual aids. It is great for adding attention getting annotations to images, screenshots, and photos. These enhanced images can then be used to make great tutorials on any subject imaginable. If you have a Surface RT give Skitch Touch a try.
Until next time…
Keep on Learning,
Tom Grissom, Ph.D.
@tomgrissom
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