Review by Amanda Bindel, Common Sense Education | Updated November 2014

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Bamboo Paper

Name: Bamboo Paper
Item: Bamboo Paper
Rating: 3
Author: Amanda Bindel

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Versatile, customizable cross-platform drawing and note-taking tool

Subjects & skills

Grades This grade range is based on learning appropriateness and doesn't take into account privacy. It's determined by Common Sense Education, not the product's publisher.

3–12

Great for:

Productivity

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Choose from a variety of paper styles: plain, lined, and graph.

Share individual pages by email or with other apps, or share entire notebooks to another device with the app.

Pros: Available for Windows, Android, and iOS devices, so it's ideal for a BYOD environment.

Cons: Lack of landscape or palm-cancelling options makes handwriting difficult.

Bottom Line: Digital notebook offers the possibility of going (almost) paperless.

How Can I Teach with This Tool?

Bamboo Papers' organization sets it apart from more specialized note-taking or drawing apps, allowing teachers to use it in many ways. Students can create notebooks for each subject area and use them to take notes and add attachments. They can even complete worksheets or save handouts to their journals: Teachers simply save the worksheets as images, and then students upload them to their devices and write over the images to answer questions or take notes. Students could then share the notebooks with their teachers for evaluation and assessment. Students might also use the app for daily journaling, adding images to their entries. Teachers could use their own journals as lesson-planner and lesson-reflection tools, while keeping all materials organized and accessible.

What Is It?

Bamboo Paper is a digital notebook -- potentially several digital notebooks, in fact. Kids can customize the color of the notebook's cover and add a title. They then can use it as they would a pen-and-paper notebook, drawing or writing on the pages as well as adding images or saved documents. Paper options include graph, lined, or plain. Writing tool choices are pens, pencils, highlighters, and crayons. Entire notebooks can be shared and opened using Bamboo Paper. Individual pages can be shared as images using email, Dropbox, Evernote, or social-media platforms.

Is It Good for Learning?

This versatile app can be used just as a pen-and-paper notebook would be, with the added ability to easily share and save across device platforms. With 100 possible pages, each notebook can hold a lot of information; the ability to add images to the pages adds to its versatility. No keyboard or audio-recording options are provided, however, so Bamboo Paper isn't as effective as specialized note-taking apps, or as sophisticated as sketching or drawing apps that offer palm-cancelling functions and layers for drawing.

Rating Details

Overall Rating

Engagement Is the product stimulating, entertaining, and engrossing? Will kids want to return?

Variety of tools and customization options give students lots of flexibility for drawing and writing.

Pedagogy Is learning content seamlessly baked-in, and do kids build conceptual understanding? Is the product adaptable and empowering? Will skills transfer?

Students and teachers can use the app the same way they'd use a traditional paper notebook -- with an added digital zing.

Support Does the product take into account learners of varying abilities, skill levels, and learning styles? Does it address both struggling and advanced students?

Each notebook holds up to 100 pages, and kids can create multiple notebooks, customizing titles and cover colors. Both individual pages and an entire notebook can be shared.

Common Sense Reviewer

Amanda Bindel Classroom teacher

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Teacher Reviews

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Featured review by
Juliana C. , Classroom teacher

Classroom teacher

Santiago College
Santiago, Chile

Replace paper note taking!

What I found more interesting about it is its simplicity. I initially thought it would work only with the pen Bamboo sells, but it did not, it is ok to use with any kind of pen to write on Ipads. The options are not so many, but enough for those that want to use the app as a replacement of paper notebooks. Bamboo gives great possibility for sharing the files, from Twitter to Evernote. When shared by email, the note is placed on the writing field as a picture. This is a great advantage. So far, I have no ...

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