The Marble Jar Channel

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll show you how I take paperless class notes on my iPad -- even when I'm given paper handouts. I did a video a while ago showing how I take paperless notes when I have been given a digital copy of the PowerPoint slides in advance.  I'm in a hybrid distance learning program, so this happens fairly frequently for me.  However, since then I've been asked a bunch of times how to do it if you are provided with printed handouts of  PowerPoints slides.   Recently, I've done a bunch of full day training, which almost always provide paper handouts, so I've had to figure this out since I don't want to go home with a giant ream of paper that I won't be able to find in two days. Photos of Handout - In Reverse The first thing I do is take photos of each page of the handout.  But for my system to work -- you have to take the photos starting at the END of the hando...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video I'll present the third and final tutorial on Workflow before it became Siri Shortcuts.  It didn't change much aside from the rebranding, so the basics are almost exactly the same, but I WILL point out some differences as we go along.  In this video, I'll do a step-by-step explanation of my favorite complex shortcut: Dictate for Directions -- just keep in mind that a Workflow is the same as a Shortcut in today's app.  There are some Workflow tutorials on YouTube that are great and that taught me quite a bit.  What I really wanted, though, was a step by step guide walking me through a complicated workflow telling me everything that workflow was doing, including the inputs and outputs.  I didn't find this, so now that I have a slightly better grasp of how workflows work, I'm doing one myself! My 2 previous videos are a tutorial-style explainer on Workflow, Actions, Inpu...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video I'll tell you all about my new obsession -- automating iPhone and iPad activities with the Workflow app.  This is the second part of a 3 part tutorial. In the last video, we went over the basics of the Workflow app and automation.  We talked about the screen setup, what a workflow is and the three different types of actions: get, transform, and share.  In this video, we'll dive a bit more into the nitty gritty areas of inputs, variables, debugging, adding workflow items to your home screen, and automation for the Apple Watch.  Here we go: Inputs As we talked about in the last video, each action is kind of like a tiny machine -- taking in an input, doing something to it, and then producing an output.  An input can be almost anything.  It can be the current date, stuff that is copied to the clipboard like a URL, or a paragraph of text.  It could be t...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll talk about the new Siri Shortcuts and show you how to use it to automate routine iPhone and iPad actions.  This is the first of a 3 part tutorial. Recently with iOS 12, Apple launched Siri Shortcuts.  It has hit with a splash, but it's not really a new app or even new functionality.  Instead, it is a rebranding, relaunching, and function expansion of the old Workflows app.  In fact, when installing iOS 12, Apple just turns your Workflow app and all of its data into Siri Shortcuts. Okay -- confession time.  I found out about the Workflow App really late.  Like a couple of months ago.  I became so obsessed with automating iphone and ipad functions that I immediately did a series of 3 videos about it.  Unfortunately, these videos were still in the hopper when Apple changed Workflow to Siri Shortcuts rendering all three videos obsolete. That was ...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’ll show you how I use Text Replacement on my iPhone and iPad to speed up my typing.  I can type pretty quickly on my iPad, but I’m absolutely hopeless on the iPhone.  Let’s just say that rely on autocorrect, A LOT.  On iOS devices, your typing speed is necessarily restricted because you have to take the time to switch keyboards for numbers and special characters.  AND there are some things that you have to type ALL THE TIME that require those characters. For these frequently used, but slightly complicated terms, I use iOS’s Text Replacement.  Text Replacement is a feature that allows you to substitute a predetermined string of characters for a frequently used term or phrase.  For example, we all have to type our email addresses a ton.  We type it every time we fill out a form, make a purchase, or log into a website. That is a lot. Email addresses ...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’ll tell you about my favorite podcast app -- Stitcher, why I like it better than the others that I’ve tried, and I'll take you through all of the features that I love the best.  I have been on the hunt for the best podcast app for years now.  Stitcher is the 4th one I’ve tried and I like it the best by far.  In case you are interested, the others that I tested out were the indigenous Apple Podcast app, iCatcher, and Overcast.  Stitcher has a premium service, which involves content, but I just use the free app.   For whatever reason, I have found podcast apps to be unnecessarily confusing. Because I’m reasonably tech savvy, I generally chalk this up to design flaws (rather than user stupidity), but I was honestly starting to wonder in the case of podcast apps. Was there something inherently confusing about RSS feeds?  Once I found Stitcher, I realized t...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll show you my workaround for creating an email distro or group list for iOS Mail.  As I’ve said in other videos, iOS Mail is a really basic app. I haven’t found a better option yet, but it does require some hacks and workarounds to approximate a full service mail app.  Here’s is a missing feature that has bugged me for years — there is no way to add an email group in contacts so that you can email the same group of people regularly.  I’m sure you can immediately think of examples in your life, but 2 of mine are an email group that I send photos to once a month and an email group for a discussion series that I lead. Since I can’t create a group of emails, I either have to add each person individually to the email — which is error prone and annoying OR I have to go back through emails, find one that I sent to this group before, forward it, and then delete the old subject and...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’m going to give you a quick tutorial on my favorite handwriting app — Notability — and show you how I take notes in class and from textbooks using the Notability app on the iPad.  There are many people who open up their laptops during class and type out their notes.  There are some nice things about this. You can store your notes with all of your other class documents and they are searchable.  The problem for me is that I don’t retain information quite as well when I type it. The kinesthetic act of writing actually helps me to commit information to memory.  Add to that the ability with handwritten notes to color code, pull in photos, draw sketches, and create relationships and it is hands down better for me than typewritten notes.  I’ve tried a bunch of different note apps.  Notability continues to be my favorite for a couple of reasons. For one thing — it ...

Hi, everyone. This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’ll show you how I use the Felt App from my iPad to send beautiful handwritten, personalized greeting cards and thank you notes without ever getting up from my chair.  Perhaps this is a little antiquated. After all, I’m someone who retrieves the snail mail from my mailbox approximately once per week. It usually looks like this. I’m pretty sure my mailman hates me.  But for me, there are some occasions when a text or email just won’t do.  Thank yous are always better in print.  Plus, I have some traditional older folks in my life who insist on greeting cards to celebrate occasions. Now, this is something I didn’t grow up with. My parents did not send greeting cards.  They were cheap in almost every way, so we tended to make cards from scratch.  So, I still prefer to send something a little more personalized than just a signed greeting card. And now, I have found an a...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video I’ll show you how to quickly turn an email, or really anything printable, into a PDF on your iPad.  Occasionally, I need to turn an email or photo into a PDF.  Maybe I need to upload it to Google Drive or draw on it.  There are workarounds for photos. If your email isn’t long, you can use one of those workarounds.  But for long emails, if I try to cut and paste the email into a PDF creating app and the formatting turns whacky, up until now I’ve been out of luck. I finally stumbled onto a hidden solution for this.  See the problem is that the native iPad email app doesn’t give you a share button.  So, say you have a long email with a bunch of formatting like this one.  You want to turn it into a PDF so that you can mark it up or save it or whatever.  If you try to copy and paste into Notability for example, you lose all of the images and formatting. ...