Evernote - Teacher Helper.

Evernote is a free web tool that I recently came across through reading Richard Lambert’s blog . Later I listened to a prerecorded webinar given on Wednesday eT@lking by Graham Clark. 

Evernote is for

            PC

            Ipad or Ipod Touch

            Iphone or Android.

If you have it on two or more such devices it will sync automatically and notes you put in using your PC will be found on for instance your Ipad when you next open it up.

Evernote allows you to keep notes that include text, photos, and audio. I cannot see any way of easily creating audio on your PC, however on the other devices it is in the toolbar and is very easy to add a voice to the note.

 If you pay $5 a month you can include all kinds of documents and video.  At present I am only using the free tool, however as I begin to collect information I may move to the paid version.  The free version allows you 60mb a month.

While I will use it to collect, sort and tag a variety of information I want to use it to collect data about students in one place so that it will help me to track what they are learning through the year.  For example the class has just finished a Science Fair project.  I have photographed these and put them in students’ notebooks.

Evernote can be downloaded from their website.  Apps are downloaded from the app stores.

There is a web clipping tool which should also be downloaded.  It sits on your tool bar and gives you the option of clipping the url, the whole article or the page.

If you set your preferences under Tools you will also be able to choose from a drop down list which notebook you want to put the note in.

A clipping tool is also added to your email and if you want to save a special email you can put it into you notebook.  For example I just did it to remind me of a password I want handy for a website.

If you are on your ipad you can also clip to your notebook using the email address assigned to you by Evernote when you join.  The following video shows you how to do this. I haven't yet mastered this aspect!  Clipping from your PC is far easier.

If you are starting a new notebook this can be done from the tool bar at the top. Once the new notebook is made you are ready to start adding notes to it.

The new note can then be clicked on, a title given to it and it can be tagged. Some teachers choose to tag by student name within a notebook.  I prefer to set up a notebook for each student.  I then tag as well, so that I could for example find all science information if I wanted.

If students had their own devices they could have Evernote on say their Ipod Touch and they could track their own work e-portfolio style. 

I like this free tool and I can see that it is going to be very useful.  I am looking forward to using it next term when I return to my classroom.

If you don't already use it I suggest you give it a go.  There are many uses for it outside of education.  Try it.