The PDF format allows annotations, essentially
sticky notes pasted on top of a document, so you
can grade and comment papers submitted to you by students
in an easy and eye-catching manner. Students can also use
this for collaboration in group projects. Acrobat is the
main tool used in professional workflow applications worldwide!
PDF files are not executable, hence quite virus-safe.
This is a huge advantage over the commonly used Microsoft
Word format, whose vulnerability to macro-viruses caused
the vast majority of recent virus-infections.
For materials you post on a class website, PDF allows
you to deliver complex documents in a single file, with
included hyperlink-navigation. A simple application are
the ubiquitous slide presentations made e.g. with MS Powerpoint.
While those can be saved to HTML format for easy viewing
by anyone, this produces a lot of hard-to-manage files and
the user experience is quite limited. PDF presentations
can be made from Powerpoint in one step and offer the same
user experience as the original format.
