EDU5648: Learning through Collaboration and Sharing 2: Technology-Mediated Social Contexts
EVERNOTE “Remember Everything” Josmar Borg
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 3 What is Evernote? ................................................................................................................... 3 Evernote and Education....................................................................................................... 4 Conclusion.................................................................................................................................. 6 References.................................................................................................................................. 7
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INTRODUCTION Throughout these years, as McLeod, S. et al. (2009) captivatingly shown, we are living in a word which is dominated by economic, technical, cultural and social change and so “the repertoire of literacy skills, required by the young in our society is expanding” (Carrington, V., Robinson, M., 2011). The 21st Century environment has brought new norms and as Prensky, M. (2001) stated “…our students’ brains have physically changed" and so should our teaching pedagogy. “Students living in a 21st century environment, instead of looking at books and taking notes as they used to do, are now looking at videos, pulling information from research databases and websites.”1 That is why we should move away from the idea of the school being the solely learning place to the school being “an important part of the learning continuum” (Casap, J., 2013). This document focuses on a very interesting application called Evernote which “is a suite of software and services designed for note taking and archiving” (Evernote, 2013) that supports the learning process in any environment. As the application’s taglines goes, Evernote is, indeed, an application used to “‘Remember Everything”, through three simple steps: ‘Capture anything’, ‘Access anywhere’ and ‘Find things fast’ (Evernote.com). Hereunder is a description of Evernote and its features, followed by a dedicated section of how to apply Evernote in education.
WHAT IS EVERNOTE? “[Evernote] is a great, free resource...” (Andrande, D., 2012) to capture all the life experiences into ‘notes’ that can be accessed from anywhere. As Benjamin (2008) stated, Evernote “is not linear” as it does not allow the user to input text only but accepts any type of media. No matter if your notes contain text, an attachment (a document, a PDF file or a photograph), a ‘to-do’ list, a recorded audio file, or a clipped web page or part of web page, it synchronizes all your ‘notes’ with the web server (cloud computing). This ‘cloud support’ offers many benefits: it acts as an automatic backup; notes can be accessed on any ‘smart’ device and/or PC; and notes can also be accessed from Evernote website in case you don’t have your own devices.
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http://evernote.com/video/#Pjn6YkCY2yA|1|1
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Evernote is a great organizational tool and it allows systematizing all the notes in three distinct ways:
The user can create different notebooks in order to place specific notes into the appropriate notebook (similar as organizing files into folder).
The user can tag the notes by using one or multiple keywords related to the note
Evernote uses metadata to automatically create attributes for each note such as the date and time created, data type, attachment information and more.
“Evernote’s incredible search capabilities” (Brian, 2012) allows searching by using tags, or by using the search option. Moreover, it contains an interesting feature called ‘Saved Search’ which lets the user to store those searching criteria which are frequently used for an even faster searching method. Apart from these built in searching features, as the Ultimate Simplified Guide to the Use of Evernote in Education (2012) claims, “Evernote has browser extensions for the major browsers...” which offers another method of searching right from your browser. For instance, when making a Google search, it does not only show the usual Google results, but it displays a dedicated section for all those stored Evernote notes corresponding to the searching keyword being used.
Other features include sharing of “notes with others via email, or popular social media” (Evernote.com). Evernote has other subapplications that can be used such as Web Clipper® that allows clipping websites or part of websites into a note; Evernote Skitch® to easily make annotations on photos; and Web Clearly® that displays the text in web pages in a readable layout that can also be customised. All this “...dominoes into me being better organised, more efficient and much less stressed" (Brian, 2012).
EVERNOTE AND EDUCATION “Evernote is a valuable application for educators. Its usefulness can range from planning a course to delivering a lesson plan to capturing feedback after class.” Embi, M. A. (2011). Evernote offers flexibility in their system because it can be used differently according to the individuals needs. This makes it ideal in an educational scenario because as Provenzano, M. (2012) stated, “one of
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the reasons I love Evernote so much is the ability for all teachers of all content areas to use it.” For instance, Provenzano, M. (2012) lists a number of different uses in a school setting: Art students can snap a photo of their artwork and share it with the teacher so they can receive feedback. All of these notes can be saved by the art teacher and then used to create a portfolio that can be shared with the students at the end of the marking period. Social Studies teachers can use Evernote Web Clipper® to clip current event stories and save them into a notebook that is shared with students. The students can take these notes and write up their own notes on why they are important to the world today. Music teacher can record themselves singing or playing an instrument and share it with the students or vice-versa. Teacher can then leave notes on how well students hit their notes. Any foreign language student can use Evernote to access notes in a shared notebook. Students can work on translations that need to be stored in their Evernote portfolios and to share with their group. Physical Education teacher can use Evernote Skitch® to leave instruction and annotations on proper weight training diagrams. Teachers can also use Evernote to collect and organize their information. According to Brian (2012), it is great tool to “…store notes pertinent to my classroom and locate them almost instantly when needed”. The sharing of worksheets, whiteboard photos and other related lessons material is also beneficial, especially to the absent students so they can follow from home and can proceed in doing the assigned Homework. By creating standard databases of class lists, assessment criteria and grading handouts, teachers can tag these databases according to subject and classes and then share with other teachers, school administrators, parents and students. As we have seen, Evernote can truly be a complementing partner for teachers and students to support their teaching and learning process. Instead of using multiple web 2.0 tools, as Brian (2012) stated, Evernote “truly was Google for my professional life”. However, time is needed to implement Evernote into education, especially for first time users, and so this incurs further workload for both the teachers and the students. However, “the small amount of time you put in up front will save you extraordinary amount of time down the road” Pinola, M. (2012).
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CONCLUSION All kind of information has become easily accessible to us and it is not possible to store all of this information in our brains. However, Evernote helps to “capture, manage & remember them all”2. “In short the possibilities are endless, because Evernote allows us to begin to capture all of these ideas and experiences from our real lives and from a digital standpoint and the memories or ideas will not slip away.” (Benjamin, M. S., 2008). Moreover, Evernote created a micro site3 which is dedicated for schools. It has useful resources, such as education-related case studies and videos, and a discussion forum to share tips and ideas for using Evernote in a school setting.
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http://evernote.com/video/#Pjn6YkCY2yA|1|1
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http://evernote.com/teachers/
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REFERENCES
Andrande, D. (2012). Evernote for education. Education Technology Guy. Retrieved [14/03/12] from http://educationaltechnologyguy.blogspot.com/p/evernote-for-education.html Benjamin, M. S. (2008) Unique Ways of Using this Application! In Embi, M. A. (2011). Web 2 Tools in Educational Series: A Quick Guide. Centre of Academic Advancement, University Kebangsaan, Malaysia Brian (2012). In Education? This Is Why You Need Evernote. Evernote in Education. Retrieved [22/02/13] from http://evernoteineducation.com/2012/12/10/in-education-this-is-why-youneed-evernote/ Carrington, V. & Robinson, M. (2011). Digital Literacies: Social learning and Classroom Practices. Sage Publications. (pp 1-4). Casap, J. (2013).Unleashing the power of the Web in Education. Work Seminar at BETT Fair 2013, London. (http://www.jcasap.com/) Embi, M. A. (2011). Web 2 Tools in Educational Series: A Quick Guide. Centre of Academic Advancement, University Kebangsaan, Malaysia Evernote. (2013). Retrieved 14/02/2013, from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evernote McLeod, S. et. al. (2009). Did you know 4.0. Retrieved [23/02/2013] from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ILQrUrEWe8 Pinola, M. (Nov, 2012). What’s All the Fuss about Evernote? Should I Be Using It? LifeHacker.com. Retrieved 26-02-13from http://lifehacker.com/5964285/whats-all-the-fuss-about-evernotewhy-do-people-use-it Prensky, M. (2001).Digital Natives Digital Immigrants. On the Horizon: MCB University Press, Vol. 9 No. 5) Provenzano, N. (2012). The Complete Guide to Evernote in Education. The Nerdy Teacher Presents (Kindle Edition). The Ultimate Simplified Guide to the Use of Evernote in Education (2012). Educational Technology and Mobile Learning. Retrieved [01/03/13] from http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2012/06/ultimate-simplified-guide-to-use-of.html
Josmar Borg
EDU5648: Assignment