[guestpost]I am away at Kids Camp this week. So, I have asked several of my favorite bloggers to write guest posts for you. This is a guest post from my good friend, Aaron Strawn. Aaron is a self-proclaimed "Kidmin Geek" who is one of the most creative guys I know! He blogs at aaronstrawn.com under the moniker #KidminGeek[/guestpost]

(Imagine this first part as a cheesy infomercial)

Is this you on a Sunday morning?

Papers everywhere! Ugh..what a mess!  Papers..who needs this first world problem, I sure don’t.

Haha, ok, here’s the truth, I use to be papers-all-over-the-podium-guy.  It’s not clean and hard to stay organized.  So when I got an iPad, it was for more than movies, reading and angry birds.  I really wanted it to organize my notes on a Sunday morning.  So how do you go from the picture above

To this:

As John Hammond said in Jurassic Park…“I’ll show you”

Best part- everything I show you today will cost…nothing

Step 1:  Make sure the documents you want to have on your iPad are in PDF format.  Most curriculums that you have will include the PDF format of the lesson.  If you have a .doc or pages, just convert it by choosing File-Export-PDF

Once your lessons are a PDF, we’re going to combine them into 1 PDF document.  First open the PDF files in the app Preview.  Then click the view menu tab and select “Thumbnails”.  Your PDF should now look like this:

BTW what you are looking at is my Sunday morning service order put together byPlanning Center.

NEXT: Select the main page you will be using or want to reference more than once i.e. Service Order.  Click on the thumbnail and hit command C then command N (copy and create new).  You now have a duplicate of your main page.  This is done so you can add it in as many times as you need.

NEXT:  Now its time to drag into your new PDF doc all the pages you want.  Simply click or select all the pages you want, then drag them on top of your new page, and boom, you have a new PDF with all the pages in it you want.  Here’s all this in action (no audio in video):

KidminGeek Make PDF

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Now to get it on your iPad.  You have a couple options:

1.Email the file to yourself

2.  Evernote.  As you saw in the video above, once you have created your PDF, just drag and drop it into a note in any evernote notebook.  Make sure it is synced, then pull up evernote on your iPad, download the PDF, and there you go.  Now you can preach and have all your lesson plans right on your iPad.

3. Dropbox.  If you have a dropbox account, upload the PDF then simply open it in your dropbox app on your iPad

Hope this helps!  Feel free to add any solutions you have, or your methods.  Thanks for reading-

BONUS: The podium I am using is called an iPodium.  It has a built in pocket for an iPad.  I love this thing!

Check it out:

These are available HERE