There's a Scanner in my Pocket :: Tech Thursday

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One afternoon, about four days before Christmas Eve, a friend dropped by with her girls. They are all in choir with Olivia, and the oldest brought a copy of the children’s choir song book. She was going to help Olivia with her solo.

Unbeknownst to me, Olivia did not know her solo. She was having trouble reading the big words.

This girl has the memory of a steel trap, especially with something set to music. I knew that with a couple of days of repetition, she would have that solo down cold.

So I did what any tech-savvy mom would do — I took out my phone, scanned the song book, and printed a copy of the music for us to keep.

Yep, you read that right. I scanned the music with my phone. I scan everything with my phone in fact. Drawings, receipts, kid’s art, business cards, pages from books — you name it, and I scan it.

Enter Scanner Pro

Pin Scanner Pro is the app I use to make beautiful scans of anything I want to keep. I.Love.This.App.

Not only can you get high-quality PDFs of documents, it will impress your friends and make you feel like a super-spy at the same time.

Need a few quick copies of a hymn for hymn study in the morning? They come out of the printer in minutes.

Need to send some copies of memory work pages to the girls at co-op? A quick click of the phone, and they are loaded onto your shared Google Drive folder.

Are you drowning in kid art, but can’t stand to throw anything away? In a few minutes, with some good natural light, you have an archive of even the oversized pieces saved as PDF.

All with a device that fits in the palm of your hand.

We recently did a big purge and rearranging of our upstairs office space. It took me about two minutes to decide to get rid of the older printer/copier I was keeping around just for the scanning function. It was huge and took up all kinds of counter space.

Now whenever I need a quick scan or copies, I simply pull out my iPhone instead.

Scanner Pro allows me to save my scans to Dropbox or even Evernote, which makes it a perfect companion to my Paperless Home Organization system.

How it Works

Taking a scan is easy. You simply point the phone’s camera like you were taking a photo. Scanner Pro does a pretty good job of automatically finding the edges of your document, but it is easy to change them by dragging with your finger if you need to.

Hold steady to take the photo and a PDF file is then stored in your phone.

From there you can:

Print (with AirPrint enabled printer)
Fax (iPhone only)
Open (In AirDrop or any number of apps including your printer app for those without an AirPrint enabled printer. I open mine in my Brother Print and Scan App to print using this method.)
Upload (To send file to Dropbox, Evernote, or Google Drive)

The little slideshow below walks you through how to scan an image or document.

So tell me, what would you scan with a super-spy pocket scanner?

Linking this up to Works for Me Wednesday at We are THAT family. More great ideas there!

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Pam

Pam is the author of The Your Morning Basket Guide and Plan Your Year: Homeschool Planning for Purpose and Peace. She also is the host of three popular podcasts -- The Homeschool Snapshots Podcast, Your Morning Basket, and The Homeschool Solutions Show. She lives in the Deep South with her husband and three kids, where she is the go-to lady for great curriculum recommendations or a just a pep talk on a rough day.