Tips and Tricks: How to Draw on PDFs

Make static PDFs interactive for speech therapy or teletherapy! Annotating PDFs is a great teletherapy trick to be more efficient with your time and materials! 

Do you use PDF resources? Or perhaps you have a CD lying around somewhere with PDF versions of some of your workbooks. Or better yet, have you bought one of my “no print” resources? Or are you a teletherapist?
There’s an easy way to save time, ink, and paper by drawing straight onto the PDF while on your tablet or computer! Or even if you have endless printer ink (said no one ever), some kids are just simply more engaged by drawing digitally – and I want to show you how easy it is to do.

Different annotation apps have various features, but they all tend to have: pen, eraser, text box, and shapes features with the ability to change color and line thickness. You are also able to save the changes made to the PDF to continue in the next session or even send home to families! The most common things I use the drawing tools for on static PDFs are to circle and cross out answers, write or type answers, complete no prep activities like mazes or matching (things that don’t require cutting/gluing).

PROGRAM TUTORIALS:

Here are step-by-step directions to accomplish this three ways – ADOBE READER (computer) and the MARKUP APP and XODO APP (tablet). All three of these options are free.

You can use ADOBE READER on your computer. You can download it by going to https://get.adobe.com/reader/

MARKUP and XODO are free annotation apps. If you are using it with a no print resource, the interactive/touch aspects still work in this app – they may not work in other annotation apps.

Some other PDF annotation apps or programs to try:

• PDF Element
• Notability
• Apple Books (preloaded on iPads)

View my NO PREP PDFs and NO PRINT activities.

Would you try this? Do you have another way to write on PDFs? Let me know!

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