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Going paperless in college - anyone?


fflav

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I was was wondering how many college students have gone paperless with the help of Evernote. Is it possible? What is your experience?

Thanks for your replies in advance! Looking forward to reading from you.

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I'm trying to go paperless, but my biggest problem is that I can't afford one of those super fast awesome scanners (they go for like $200 a pop :blink: ). My school has scanners that we can use to put the files on a hard drive, but they take a long time scan things, and well, I'm kind of lazy :-/

I try to take notes on my computer as often as possible, but I'm a science major, which makes that difficult, but for my non-science classes I take notes on my computer, and then only print unit notes at the end of the semester becuase I need paper to study with.

I also *try* to scan my hand written science notes, but that didn't work last semster. I'm going to try for this semester.

I have a GTD/reference system that I've built for the past two years, and I use that to organize my notes, but this seems like more of a paperless discussion than a "how do you organize" discussion, so I won't bore anyone with a detailed list of how I organize stuff.

But basically, I think it's possible to go paperless in college, but it seems like it takes a lot of discipline and time (unless you choose to invenst in one of those fancy scanners), but discipline, a plan, and a system definitely look like requirements.

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I'm trying to go paperless, but my biggest problem is that I can't afford one of those super fast awesome scanners (they go for like $200 a pop :blink: ). My school has scanners that we can use to put the files on a hard drive, but they take a long time scan things, and well, I'm kind of lazy :-/

I try to take notes on my computer as often as possible, but I'm a science major, which makes that difficult, but for my non-science classes I take notes on my computer, and then only print unit notes at the end of the semester becuase I need paper to study with.

I also *try* to scan my hand written science notes, but that didn't work last semster. I'm going to try for this semester.

I have a GTD/reference system that I've built for the past two years, and I use that to organize my notes, but this seems like more of a paperless discussion than a "how do you organize" discussion, so I won't bore anyone with a detailed list of how I organize stuff.

But basically, I think it's possible to go paperless in college, but it seems like it takes a lot of discipline and time (unless you choose to invenst in one of those fancy scanners), but discipline, a plan, and a system definitely look like requirements.

Thanks for your post!

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  • 2 weeks later...

I've gone as paperless as possible my second go-round in college. Started off with using just Zoho Docs and Google Docs, but in the last 18 months added in Evernote and dumped Zoho (my school now uses Google Apps so I don't need it). I type all my notes and in the rare instance I write any notes, I then transcribe those. I would scan them but my handwriting is terrible and I find entering the information in a 2nd times helps to reinforce what I wrote down. All my notes are contained in Google Docs and Evernote, with all research ideas, papers, links, etc. being wholly contained in class-specific notebooks in Evernote. I can't fully switch to one system since GDocs is too cumbersome to make quick notes in and Evernote is certainly not suited to typing papers in. I've still got a ton of old papers I need to scan and file away, so I'll definitely be making use of Evernote's OCR capabilities for that.

This process has been made demonstrably easier this time around since most of my professors are emailing us our syllabi and assignments rather than handing them out in class and I'm utilizing ebooks as much as possible.

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I actually do all my university work paperless, apart from the actual writing and handing in part of course - I'm not exactly allowed to email my work for plagiarism reasons. However, I write my lecture notes by hand (I'm a maths/economics student), and then as soon as I get home, I scan them in, tag them, and sort them into the respective folders so they are easy to find for my revision for exams. It's very systematic, but also, due to my tendencies, very necessary.

I genuinely believe Evernote has changed the way I work and my ability to be organised. I failed my last year at university, but thanks to Evernote, I'm now on a far better path.

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  • 1 month later...

Hi, first, sorry about my english, I'm French.

 

I wrote a post yesterday on how I use Evernote to take Science Class Notes (http://discussion.evernote.com/topic/35255-science-class-notes-and-evernote/). 

 

I type all of my class notes in Emacs org-mode, not directly in Evernote, because I can easily include formulas when there are just 3-5 lines. Then I export the note into Evernote in PDF, so they are searchable. 

 

When there are diagrams I draw them and number each of them on paper, report number on my note ([diagram no. 1, etc.]), scan them at the evening (I have a cheap Epson scanner), and put into an Evernote notebook. I don't integrate diagrams directly into my class notes because I prefer have them separate.

 

I type notes directly into Evernote for particular things, like summaries, important definitions, assignments and other things I want to access quickly.

 

I put all school (and non-school) related documents, slides, agendas into respective notebooks. I also have a general "School" notebook to put all stuff that don't fit into a particular matter (not sure about this word) notebook.

 

Hope this can help, I always try to find new ways to better organize my Evernote, for school and non-school related stuff.

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  • 11 months later...
  • 1 month later...

I'm gone paperless for 2 weeks by now using iPad, iPhone and Mac:

  • with iPad and Adonit Jot Pro, I write on Penultimate taking notes during lessons;
  • with my Mac, I store notes taken w/ Penultimate and gather infos from the web w/ EN Web Clipper and PDFs of the books, slide from professors etc.

EN wrote a user story about me to show how you can do that Evernote italiano, Giacomo Barbieri, studente universitario, usa ...

 

I also wrote a post on my blog on how I use EN http://tweaknology.org/?s=evernote

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  • 4 months later...

Thought I'd contribute here, even though the post is quite old.

I've just completed my first year at university and I've done so (almost) paperlessly.

 

  • All modules I take get their own notebook. I also have two extra notebooks - one for misc notes and one for paperwork specifically to do with my place at university (student loans etc).
  • All my class notes are taken on my laptop directly into Evernote. Since I'm studying History of Art having the internet open and working into a digital notebook means that I can easily google images we're discussing and place them straight into my notes. The only thing that would make this better would be having a little camera on the back of my Mac Air so that I can capture images of the whiteboard discreetly. Occasionally I also record lectures, although this has been less successful. The evernote recording algorithms just aren't as good.
  • I save all journal articles I use (or might use in the future) directly into Evernote as their own note. Then I use the mark up feature to go through and highlight them. Having the premium membership also means that I can search the PDF's like any other note - extraordinarily helpful when it comes to writing essays.
  • Once a week I sit down and scan any paper I've collected from classes. This means notes we've been given, returned essays etc. I do keep the paper in a level arch file. Everything is captured on Evernote that was once paper. I invested in a multiple page feeder scanner, it wasn't too expensive because I got it second hand. Put it this way, the scanner and the premium Evernote membership is less than what some of my classmates have spent on printing this year.
  • I take notes from books by hand. This is the only bit of my workflow that I'm not happy with. I've tried taking notes from books onto my computer but it's not worked for me yet, the information doesn't stay in and I struggle to balance a book and a keyboard. I scan the notes and then I file these away too. I also scan the front cover and the inside page of the book - so that I have all the info for referencing.

In a whole year at university, I have generated about 3/4 of a lever arch file of paper - and that includes an inch thick photocopied 'book' that we were given for one class containing all the readings we needed for the course. Some of my friends have multiple files already. I can't be bothered with storing that. At the end of my course I know I can just chuck these files away and still have all the info. To be honest, I've got no idea why I keep them.

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  • 7 months later...
  • 1 month later...

New user to Evernote here. I recently started using Evernote and found found it to be amazing! I am also thinking about going paperless. One question I have is whether having a free account is enough space for me to go paperless. What are people's thoughts? Did anyone run into the problem of not having enough space? For anyone who is paperless in the home or office, are you using the free account or the premium? Also, does everyone buy a scanner? Is it feasible to take pictures with the phone?

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New user to Evernote here. I recently started using Evernote and found found it to be amazing! I am also thinking about going paperless. One question I have is whether having a free account is enough space for me to go paperless. What are people's thoughts? Did anyone run into the problem of not having enough space? For anyone who is paperless in the home or office, are you using the free account or the premium? Also, does everyone buy a scanner? Is it feasible to take pictures with the phone?

 

Hi there and thanks for signing up for Evernote!

 

I used a free Evernote account throughout college at San José State University and I didn't run into any limit issues. I used Evernote mainly for collecting research material and taking notes. Some of my notes I took on paper and uploaded them into Evernote notes (via a mobile device). It really helped me stay organized visually which was what I was missing from paper notebooks and my school planner. 

 

You have a bunch of "space" to work with but you have upload and note size limits to consider. You can essentially store unlimited (using this word rather freely) content in your account as long as you don't go over the monthly upload and note size quota: https://evernote.com/contact/support/kb/#!/article/23283158. 

 

To note, I didn't use Evernote as my word processor. It's not meant to be one at this time and it was easier for me to use Microsoft Word and Pages for my essays (which I would then stick in a note via a file attachment). I think this is what helped me not run into any limit issues. If you're taking notes in meetings, Evernote is great for this as meeting notes are typically much shorter than classroom notes. 

 

For the scanner bit, I use Scannable (iOS) and the built in camera within Evernote to scan things into my account. I think this all really depends on what you're scanning on a daily basis. Do you run a small business? Do you work in a company that doesn't have a scanner? 

 

If you do run into limit issues, you can upgrade to Premium as the price is reasonable. Or if this isn't something that you want to do just yet, you can put some effort into referring your friends and family to Evernote and rack up Evernote Points to redeem for Premium, for free: https://evernote.com/points/.

 

Hope this helps.

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@Lawlitta: Thank you for your helpful input. I'm soon going to be a graduate student, so I want to become better organized in all aspects such as in my school and at home. Based on your response, I am guessing I should be fine witg the free account unless I want to go paperless at home as well.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Do any of you put your textbook files into Evernote(large pdf files,around 400mb,but it's impossible due to the note upload limits!!),or you just split it into half?

How do you organize your textbooks in this case?O.o

Much appreciated.

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Sorry, but the max Note size for even Premium and Business users is 200 megabytes. You might want to consider a Premium account and break larger uploads into smaller chunks.

https://evernote.com/contact/support/kb/#!/article/23258452

Do any of you put your textbook files into Evernote(large pdf files,around 400mb,but it's impossible due to the note upload limits!!),or you just split it into half?

How do you organize your textbooks in this case?O.o

Much appreciated.

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Do you have access to a link to these PDFs? You can always store the links in Evernote versus the PDF file if it's too big.

 

Do any of you put your textbook files into Evernote(large pdf files,around 400mb,but it's impossible due to the note upload limits!!),or you just split it into half?

How do you organize your textbooks in this case?O.o

Much appreciated.

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  • 4 weeks later...

These seem like awfully large files, even for text books.  Do you know how they were created?  If they were scanned, they may have been scanned at overly high resolutions (300 dpi is more than enough) and may have been scanned as color even though the document is B/W.  If you have access to a copy of Adobe Acrobat, you could try using it to optimize the scanned file.  You could also run it through the compression utility at smallpdf.com  I just ran a 1400 page engineering report that was about 70 MB in size and it compressed it (basically reducing the resolution) to about 30 MB. And still very readable. 

 

 

Do any of you put your textbook files into Evernote(large pdf files,around 400mb,but it's impossible due to the note upload limits!!),or you just split it into half?

How do you organize your textbooks in this case?O.o

Much appreciated.

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  • 1 year later...

Old post, but I thought I'd chime in.

I'm a bit older (late thirties) and I'm taking University courses online, one at a time. Given my slower pace and the fact that I'm taking History - a class with readings in PDF format - I just import everything into EN and then annotate/highlight the PDF's using EN on the iPad. It's great, I can sit wherever I want and I'm not tied to a computer. Wherever my iPad will go I can read my school articles. The only part that's tricky is if I want to take notes while reading something. That's where two screens really come in handy; one for reading and one for typing in my notes. 

I create a notebook for my current course and then put all previous course notes into a single notebook called "School-Archive". I try to keep notebooks to a minimum so I use tags to sort everything out.

In my current class notebook I use tags like (readings, assignments, notes) and in my archive book there's a tag for each class (e.g. HIST 240, HIST 320). 

So far it's been working fairly well. I seem to be okay without using a pen despite many accounts to the contrary which state writing = retention.

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  • Level 5*
3 minutes ago, TechBarber said:

PDF format - I just import everything into EN and then annotate/highlight the PDF's using EN on the iPad. 

I don't find the EN tool the best way for extensive note taking on top of a pdf.

My practice is to import the pdf to the Notability app. It's a much better editing experience.  When finished, I export my work as a pdf and store it back in Evernote

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20 hours ago, DTLow said:

I don't find the EN tool the best way for extensive note taking on top of a pdf.

My practice is to import the pdf to the Notability app. It's a much better editing experience.  When finished, I export my work as a pdf and store it back in Evernote

I was doing that for a while, but for just highlighting I found EN to be sufficient. Sending everything to Notability and storing on Google Drive, then back to EN....it was too tedious for me. 

I do like Notability though and would agree it's more robust.

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