'Master Class' THING 5: Evernote

This is the last "Thing!" Thank you so much for participating in the program again. I hope that you have found some of these new tools useful. I've had fun exploring them!

Some Web 2.0 tools are perfect for one-off projects (Prezi, Animoto, VoiceThread), while others take time to set up but are great for longer-term applications (Weebly, Diigo, Edmodo). Evernote falls into the latter category and has become one of my favorite Web 2.0 applications now that I have begun using it regularly. Evernote is an application that allows you to keep notes collected into a variety of different notebooks, sort of like an online filing system. Notes can be text, images, websites, or PDFs, and can be tagged and added to a notebook. For example, I was looking into e-textbooks a few months ago and I had several Post-It notes with vendor information, several websites with articles about e-textbooks programs, and some notes I had taken at a conference. I was able to take a picture of each Post-It note with the camera on my phone and upload it to my Evernote iPhone app. I was able to add each website to my Evernote computer application. And I was able to take notes from a conference on my Evernote iPad app. I added each of these notes to my "School" notebook. These apps all sync together, so that I could get all of my notes on any of those devices. Even if you don't have a smartphone, being able to use Evernote on a computer (you could use it both at school and at home) would allow you to save collections of websites, images and documents for universal access.

Watch this video for the company's description:



Here is a student's perspective:

To complete this Thing, create an Evernote account. You will have to download the application like you did with Diigo (if you have any problems doing this at school, contact Mike Connors or Dave Fischer). Create some notes from websites, images, and notes you've typed into Evernote, then create a few different Notebooks and save the notes into those notebooks. Make sure to tag each note, too. Finally, try sharing one of your Notebooks with the Master Class group (Bridget W., Kirstin B., Kellie D., Kristi S., and me) by clicking the "Shared" button at the top of the Notebook section. You can choose which Notebook to share by clicking "Start Sharing", then choose "Share with Individuals", and then just type in our RB email addresses. I just tried sharing my Notebooks with my husband and with Doreen, but I don't yet know what they will be able to see/do with what I've shared.

It took some time for me to make adding stuff to Evernote a habit, but now that I do, I have a really useful and robust account full of organized notes!

To complete Thing 5:

• Watch the videos
• Download Evernote
• Create an account
• Add 5-7 Notes and tag each Note with keywords
• Create 2-3 Notebooks
• Add Notes to Notebooks
• Share with the Master Class
• Post about your experiences. Would you use this personally? Would it be worth the time it would take for initial set-up? Do you have mobile devices that would make this even more useful than if you were just using it on a desktop?