Final-year med student, Shivani, shares several ways in which she uses her One by Wacom pen tablet in her everyday life – for studying and hobbies – and even how she’s even been able to earn a little bit of money with her Wacom.
Notetaking
Shiv uses Microsoft One Note for her primary notetaking solution, but she also suggests trying Notability, Microsoft Power Point or Good Notes which all work well with a Wacom tablet. Although she didn’t mention it in the video, Wacom’s Bamboo Paper app is also an excellent choice.
Filling in exam papers on your laptop
With the addition of a PDF editing app (Shiv uses Notability), you’ll be able to complete exam papers in a digital format, add images, annotations, sketches, highlights and more and even submit your exams digitally without having to print or scan them.
“Life admin” stuff in a paperless workflow
It might sound boring, but Shiv says that filling out forms in a paperless workflow has massively simplified her life.
Online tutoring
This is one of the ways that Shiv has been able to earn money – tutoring students of different ages and abilities utilizing a virtual tutoring platform. She uses a UK-based site called MyTutor.
Making educational videos
If online teaching is not your thing or is not available in your area, you may want to create educational content for YouTube or another video platform. Editing your images with a pen tablet will allow you to create unique thumbnails that will help your videos stand out from the crowd. You’ll need screen-recording software (Shiv uses Quicktime Player) as well as your notetaking app (or canvas of your choice). If you’re lucky to have gained a wide-enough audience, you can start to monetize your videos.
Creating digital art
Well, creating digital art with a Wacom tablet is a given. It can be a wonderful hobby in and of itself, or if you get good, you might consider gifting or even selling your creations.
Editing and annotating images and photos
You can edit your photos for pleasure, but if you’re considering creating videos or Instagram content, a pen tablet will be super-useful for creating eye-catching visuals that will help to get you more clicks and engagement.
Video editing
You’ll notice that Shiv adds hand-written captions and annotations in her videos – and yep! She creates them on her One by Wacom tablet. Using Autodesk Sketchbook (a wonderful, free drawing app), she adjusts the canvas size and creates three different layers: a snapshot of the video frame, a transparent grid, and the writing that she wants to do. She uses the predictive stroke feature in Sketchbook to make her handwriting look flawless. Once she is ready with the caption, she hides the grid and snapshot layers and saves the file in .png format. Finally she inserts the clip in the appropriate place in the video.
About Shivani
Shivani (Shiv), hails from the West Midlands area in the UK and is medical student in her final year of studies. She hopes to become a general practitioner, but is open to other career options in the medical field because family and work/life balance are things she has always valued. Shivani will be the first doctor in her family and contrary to the stereotype of doctors having poor penmanship skills, Shiv’s handwriting is flawless.
External links
Shiv has put together a collection of videos on how she studies and takes notes on her YouTube channel.
