Evernote has been on my phone for 2-3 years, ever since a colleague told me that it was the greatest thing ever. I "tried" it for about 6 minutes and then never really looked at it again.
I've now messed with it for a couple of hours (Remember, I had that goal of getting better at playing!) and this actually could be a system that works for me. The problem that I always have with paper and pencil systems is that most of my life is online. Evernote makes sense because I can dump things I find into different notebooks (School, English 10, 10 Quest, Creative Writing, Cooking, Knitting, Daily To-Dos) and then add tags (feminist, Zadie Smith, writing rules, Vonnegut, Hermione, etc.) so that I can find notes by date or label. I can also share the notes and notebooks with others, either allowing them to modify or just allowing them to view. So, when I take a picture of my whiteboard, I can send it to a student without sending it as a text or giving them my personal email. I've already shared my Daily To-Dos with my husband so he can mark items off the list or add to it.
Because of the digital rabbit holes I'm constantly getting lost in, I have bookmarks and screenshots all over the place. Evernote, with the Evernote Web Clipper, seems like it will give me places to put everything. It actually works a lot like Pinterest but I can also add text to pictures and have notes that I write. I could see this being really handy for classes that revolve around current events, like my Feminist Lit class did, because I could stash articles and pictures as I find them and sort through them later to decide what I want to share with students, what I want to post on Twitter, etc.
As far as the RAT framework, Evernote is far more than a replacement for my post-it notes scattered everywhere and bookmarks saved in my browsers. If I can use it as it's intended, it will save me from seemingly endless searches for that one thing I know I have somewhere or remaking something from scratch. In that way, it is an amplification. I wonder, too, if it might be seen as transformational in that, unless you are a master at creating indexes for yourself, I don't know that you could search your notes as easily or share what you've saved as efficiently.
I'm not sure how quickly I will use up the space in the free version - that could be a drawback, but if I keep using it and like how it works for me, I would be willing to pay for it. Another drawback - and maybe this is a possibility that I haven't seen yet - I wish that it had a calendar option so I could keep notes and calendars in the same place. I just thought of that idea, so I'll have to do some research.
Come November, I'll let you know if I'm still with it!
Thanks for your post, Erin! I was also intrigued by the possibilities of Evernote. I downloaded it onto my computer and have been playing around with it some. Organization is an area I have some room for improvement, so I look forward to getting more familiar with it. I like your ideas of sharing content with students, creating multiple “notebooks” and also adding tags to locate certain note topics. I first saw this resource as replacement, but I think there’s more to it. Sharing notes with students, allowing them to add to content, and just making organization more efficient for teacher makes me think it falls into at least amplification, if not transformation.
ReplyDeleteI have been using Evernote for about a year now, but I have only used it to take notes. The idea of using it to collect digital artifacts, websites, notes, screenshots, et cetera is great. Awesome idea!
ReplyDeleteErin, I really appreciated your post AND your honesty..I'm on the same page, always great intentions to stay organized and then October rolls through my room looks like a tornado went through it! The ways you could use this seem really great, definitely worth checking out more in-depthly!
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