This week has seen the start of Research Toolkit, the first ever Victorian PLN short course. Over the next four weeks 150 educators will be exploring search skills, useful tools and digitised resources in this online course. The participants have been exploring Evernote in the opening unit so it seems fitting to have a look at some resources for making this service even more powerful.
Evernote is a cloud based note taking tool that works on a wide range of devices and keeps your notes synchronised everywhere. It allows for text, pictures, photographs and audio recordings. It can even clip entire web pages and save them for later. Notes you create can also be shared online, so it is an easy way to publish to the web as well.
Evernote also recently update their mobile apps
This convenience and power makes Evernote an excellent tool for education. Teachers can use Evernote for lesson planning, sharing notes with students, record keeping and staying organised. Students can keep their notes organised into notebooks, take photographs of the whiteboard (the handwriting will be scanned and is searchable) and access their work across a range of mobile devices. Many teachers are getting their students to create digital portfolios in Evernote. Because everything is stored in the cloud, it also means that a student’s work is transferable. They can take it into the next year level or even take it with them when they change schools. Imagine the possibilities of a student being able to access their writing from a previous year and compare how they have progressed. Or a Year 12 student being able to access their notes from a biology class they took in Year 10!
It is for these reasons that so many educators have become converts to this Evernote. I’m sure many of you are using it from day to day, but here are a few resources that you might explore to make the Evernote even more useful:
- The fabulous Bec Spink (Miss Spink on Tech) is not only a great advocate for Evernote, but she also shares tutorials and tips for using it on her blog. In fact she has a whole section of her blog devoted just to Evernote. Bec’s work using KustomNote is also very interesting. KustomNote allows you to create custom templates for your notes, and Bec has produced some screencasts explaining how it all works.
- Richie Lambert is another educator doing great work with Evernote. Earlier this year Richie attempted to produce the definitive summary of teacher uses for Evernote. It’s a great read, as is the rest of Richie’s blog.
- Evernote also appoint ambassadors each year who explore how to organise different aspects of your life. One of the education ambassadors for this year is Rob Van Nood. Rob’s post on How to create a portfolio with Evernote is well worth a read, and his blog explores his experiences using Evernote in Education.
And for those of you looking for some simple ways to make your life with Evernote a little bit easier, why not check out our guide to using email to create notes in Evernote?