5 replies to this topic

[JayF]

I have been invited to offer a workshop on Evernote for faculty members at our university's winter retreat later this month. Evernote is very customizable, and consequently be off-putting. What topics should I address if I want my colleagues to consider adding Evernote into their scholarly workflow, either for research or teaching?

[GrumpyMonkey]

I have been invited to offer a workshop on Evernote for faculty members at our university's winter retreat later this month. Evernote is very customizable, and consequently be off-putting. What topics should I address if I want my colleagues to consider adding Evernote into their scholarly workflow, either for research or teaching?

Good luck with the workshop! Here are some topics (not just about Evernote) that I have tried to cover in the past.

http://www.princeton.../paperless.html

http://www.princeton...ivorytower.html

[Sherman Dorn]

We're playing with that in my college (a large professional college), and I've been thinking about use cases. Below are some of the ones I've seen, thought of, used, etc. The items with asterisks are from my own practices:

• *Collecting meeting materials -- when an email is sent with materials for a committee meeting, I can either forward that to my Evernote email inbox (the one that comes with your account) or directly create a note when I'm on my PC using Outlook. Then at the meeting, I can open up the documents within Evernote (either on my laptop or tablet).
• *Creating a procedural checklist for meetings -- very useful if you are chairing a meeting and need to go through a list of things, or where you can use checklists for procedural issues (e.g., predictable votes on agenda items).
• *Creating an agenda for a discussion class -- If I have a sequence if issues or questions, I can create a checklist and then later review which topics were covered/not covered.
• *Collecting receipts from trips -- either with a portable scanner such as Doxie or with a scanner when I get back.
• *Documenting financial transactions more generally--I save the confirmation page of a heck of a lot of transactions on Evernote. If the relevance is transient, then I can delete them every few months. If it's for things like taxes, it's VERY important to scan and collect images of thermal receipts, since they fade quickly.
• *Storing non-financial passwords--there are a lot of things online that need unique passwords, but where security does not have to be Fort-Knox-like. I have a small notebook filled with those, so I only have to memorize the essential, secure items.
• *Collecting various wish-lists or review lists--so for example, if I see an announcement of a forthcoming book, or a consumer product that may or may not ever exist in reality, I may save a screenshot and review it later.
• Research-group notes: this is for in-event processes such as meeting notes or key events rather than papers or literature (for that, I'd recommend Dropbox for sharing files). See above on general meeting uses of Evernote.
• Teaching students how to use Evernote for collecting materials for papers.
• Group tasks: if the goal is to collect items (rather than a writing task), Evernote is a good choice.
• I think institutional offices helping students with disabilities need to evaluate Livescribe for their own population -- in combination with teaching Cornell notes (or another structured notetaking system), it could help a number of students.

It is probably a good overview task to explain what Evernote is in contrast with other tools such as Dropbox, Nudgemail, etc. The obvious, most common contrast: Dropbox is for sharing files, Google Docs for collaboration, Evernote for collecting materials individually or as a group.

[JayF]

Thanks for the great list, Sherman. I am also working with a group of faculty members who are interested in helping undergraduates use Evernote and Livescribe pens to create and use a "personal knowledge base" that enhances their academic performance. We want to teach students strategies for active learning and methodical, research-based writing. Our early results are tepid at best, but our first attempt at materials that help students understand Evernote in this context is located at www.evernoteaturi.wikispaces.com. Maybe we could collaborate with in a future project.

[JayF]

Thanks to everyone for suggestions. Since the theme of our workshop was "The Future of Learning," I focused my presentation more on "Personal Knowledge Management" than on the features of Evernote. Here is a link to my slides. I look forward to reading your ideas for exploring this topic further.

[GrumpyMonkey]

Thanks to everyone for suggestions. Since the theme of our workshop was "The Future of Learning," I focused my presentation more on "Personal Knowledge Management" than on the features of Evernote. Here is a link to my slides. I look forward to reading your ideas for exploring this topic further.

That was interesting. Thanks a lot for sharing it. I think there is certainly something to be said for having different learning methods (handwriting as opposed to typing), and one of the strengths of Evernote is that you can get your notes into it as typed text on the keyboard, handwritten notes on the iPad, or handwritten using pen and paper (Livescribe, Moleskine, or just plain scanning). I'd say this is one of the strengths of Evernote, so that no matter how students find they learn best, they can create a database tailored to their use case.