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Create, Collect, Collaborate with Evernote


rtoledo

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Share the ways Evernote can be the one app for all your students education needs.

Create: Create content directly in Evernote. Text notes, Audio notes, snapshots, lists and more.

Collect: Bring in content from all other sources. Add files, Web clips, images, scans and more. Once in Evernote you can easily organize them.

Collaborate: Share single notes, share notebooks, share with individuals, groups of people or the world.

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I have not started using Evernote in the classroom yet, and I'm told not to until I get some issues resolved. The first of which is security. I teach middle school and our principal is concerned that students will be able to upload content that is not "school related". Content such as pornography and such. Are there safeguards in place for such things?

Second, is it possible for students to share folders with each other and not with the teacher? And, how would you control the sharing of homework within shared folders? Is it possible?

Last, is there a way for parents to view content and control which content they have access to? Perhaps, make them read only??

I appreciate any and all help. I can see Evernote being a great tool, but like with any tools.... safety first!

Thanks!

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  • Level 5*

hi coffeysmadhouse. welcome to the forum!

i think evernote is like email: kids can do whatever they want with it. they could email porn to themselves or their friends. in the old days, kids brought magazines to school and passed them around to their friends. obviously, the same thing could be done with homework. some stuff is out of your hands, and i wouldn't expect teachers, schools, or parents to be able to have much control over that kind of stuff. i've taught kids who were programmers, and they had far more tech savvy in junior high than adult IT managers.

you could require everyone to submit their passwords to you, and that would enable you to monitor their accounts. security problem solved?

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  • Level 5*

With 1500 kids, that doesn't make my day. I know other schools are using the program and I know they are having a lot of success... but how? I'm still a little unclear on the controls in place. There has to be something or K-12 wouldn't be using it.

lol. i was thinking of each classroom teacher overseeing 30 or 40 kids :)

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Great questions. I'll let other teachers and administrators chime in on workflows that they are using. Since every school has a unique set of requirements and variables (hardware,etc) one of the primary benefits of Evernote is the flexiblitliyt it provides and the ability to create systems and customization for each unique situation.

Regarding your question about safeguards there aren't any explicit controls in place. Again going back to the uniqueness of each school some schools have safeguards in place for safe browsing, blocking of things, etc. In general we are hearing from schools who not only introduce Evernote to their students but also use it as an opportunity to introduce proper research techniques, organization skills, etc.

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I work in administration in education. We are constantly visiting these issues. For homework, it would be best to have students e-mail a completed assignment to the teacher's evernote e-mail and use the tag feature within the subject of the e-mail to assign it a tag or a notebook. Students would not be able to see others completed work but the assignments would be in one electronic location for the teacher. Once the assignment is graded, the teacher could sent back to the individual student's notebook. That notebook could be shared with parents. Students would not have the opportunity to cheat since they would never see another student's completed work in the teacher's evernote homework acct.

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  • 3 months later...

you could require everyone to submit their passwords to you, and that would enable you to monitor their accounts. security problem solved?

might be a bit easier and offer more control options if you made an account for each of your classes and provided the students with the login credentials... May also allow you to create a note or notebook and offer links to it that are read only... Im new to evernote tho, I know this functionality is possible in dropbox but not sure if evernote includes the same features.

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I have not started using Evernote in the classroom yet, and I'm told not to until I get some issues resolved. The first of which is security. I teach middle school and our principal is concerned that students will be able to upload content that is not "school related". Content such as pornography and such. Are there safeguards in place for such things?

Second, is it possible for students to share folders with each other and not with the teacher? And, how would you control the sharing of homework within shared folders? Is it possible?

Last, is there a way for parents to view content and control which content they have access to? Perhaps, make them read only??

I appreciate any and all help. I can see Evernote being a great tool, but like with any tools.... safety first!

Thanks!

I can only deal with some of this, but I am the mom of a 15 year old so I get where you are coming from.

First, at school, the school should have adequate safeguards already set up to restrict internet browsing so the students should not be able to clip content that you don't want them to. Outside of school is really the parents' area of control and responsibility.

Next, you could certainly set it up so that you have passwords to everyone's accounts. Does this mean you need to look at all of them? No. Look when you think there is a need. You can also have the students give their parents their password. I often see parents say their children have to friend them on Facebook, but the real way to make sure you have total access is to have the password. You don't need to use it unless there is a concern. In your case, even if the school didn't do anything nothing prevents a parent from telling their child they need their password to view their Evernote files.

Further, the parent should have adequate safeguards at home if they desire them.

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  • 1 year later...

Okay, this issue is a big one for some. As an Admin and IT Director, I am going to wade in...

 

@GoodSpeech: Great workflow - having students email teachers their work (to the Evernote email address) with the correct tags is brilliant! Will definitely pitch that to my teachers this semester...

 

@Candid: Good points, our IT Department expends considerable resources to monitor our network and what sites are being trafficked. Our monitoring allows us to block any inappropriate sites and systems that circumvent our firewalls (aka. proxies). Even though we monitor, if students want to do something on our network, they will find a way to do it - no matter what security we have in place.

 

From my Admin perspective, you simply cannot block everything, and you lose a lot of educational value if you do. Our district adopted the modified Respectful Use Policy created by the International Society for Technology in Education and we use that policy if we need to have some very difficult discussions with students and parents. As a school, we setup and monitor our systems to ensure that the students did not get inappropriate materials while they were at school (to the best of our ability). With using the internet comes some inherent responsibility and it is important to make sure that our young people are acting responsibly.

 

Now, that being said, it is possible for a student to send inappropriate pictures and files to themselves in an Evernote notebook - just like it is possible for any adult to have an inappropriate Evernote notebook. If that "Private" notebook remains "Private" we would never know that it exists - essentially, no harm, no foul. If that material does make an appearance in the school, we treat it as a violation of our school policies and immediately take disciplinary action. We would follow the same set of actions if a student brought in their personal laptop and showed inappropriate videos during school time.

 

Legal precedent would tend to support that students can be disciplined for inappropriate materials that they bring into school (based upon Tinker v. DesMoines (1969) and Morse v. Frederick (2007) - for legal issues, always consult the Principal, the Superintendent, the School Lawyer, and the School Board if you have to - don't climb a tree when your students are holding axes...).

 

This issue is a can of worms and it really depends on what your Admins and IT Staff are willing to do. I have worked with IT Departments that refuse to do anything that can possibly have negative consequences - and I have worked with others that prefer to put the ownership and responsibility on the students. It really does depend on what systems and policies you have in place.

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