Getting Started Guide for Teachers

[missb6_2 11]

Hi Everyone,

 

I have put together a collection of Evernote resources that I provided to my staff to get them started with Evernote. Thought I would share it here incase others find it useful. 

 

Here is the link- http://evernote4teachers.postach.io/ 

 

On a side note there is a heap more posts on my blog about Evernote in Education http://becspink.com/evernote/. 

 

Happy to answer any questions and share further! 

 

Bec

[Candid 167]

I liked what you put together. I think that will be helpful for teachers new to Evernote. 

 

My only real quibble is about whether it is wise for all teachers to have a notebook per student. There's a recent post here: https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/64282-evernote-portfolios-high-school-math/ that shows the problems a high school teacher might encounter with 180 students and trying to do individual notebooks. 

 

The other thing you don't show and I can't say I've seen anywhere ever is how to wrap up the year with Evernote. I would assume that at some point you need to shut down each individual notebook and move notes to an archive possibly replacing the notebook structure with a tag structure. It would be interesting to see more on that process. 

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Great stuff! Thanks for posting.

 

@missb6_2

 

A few things to think about, though.

 

(1) First, you say that "Your password is not stored on Evernote servers," but my understanding is that Evernote does store our passwords. I think this is pretty common for most sites, though I would prefer they didn't.

 

(2) Second, from your charts it would seem that you place assessment data and confidential student data in your Evernote account. My limited experience with school districts in the lovely city of Melbourne (where you are based) is that they seem quite open and enthusiastic about technology in the classroom, so it may well be that Evernote is a great fit there. However, each country has its own laws, each school has its own policies, and I recommend teachers find out how data should be handled in their particular cases. You wouldn't want to expose yourself legally if something were to happen, and, more importantly, you want to do your utmost to protect your students' data. In my case, I don't feel terribly comfortable storing confidential data that has been entrusted to me on the cloud in an unencrypted format, so I do not use Evernote for student records. 

http://www.christopher-mayo.com/?p=1605

 

(3) I don't know if you mentioned this, but Free users get one shared notebook, while Premium users get up to 250. One possibility to avoid issues with notebook limits is to have STUDENTS share their one shared notebook with you. This allows you to have lots more notebooks (if you want them) in your account. One drawback here is that you can only join up to 100 notebooks as a Premium or Free user (250 for Business), and I don't know if this 100 counts towards that 250 notebook limit. If it doesn't, then one nice thing about this system is that you would effectively get 350 notebooks in your account. Yeah, I know that it seems unlikely to be the case, but it might be worth a try to see if this would work!

http://www.christopher-mayo.com/?p=169

 

 

@candid

I wrote a post about how I have used Evernote in the classroom in the past.

http://www.christopher-mayo.com/?p=1724

 

In step #7, I talk about moving the notebooks into an archive. Basically, I selected all of the notes, tagged them with the course name, and dumped them into a single notebook. It works pretty well for me.

[missb6_2 11]

Thanks @GrumpyMonkey,

 

 

Have you ready this post on the Evernote blog discussing the three laws- it explicitly says passwords are not stored on the servers. "We don’t store your password on our servers and no one at Evernote will ever ask you for it."- Phil Libin

 

Like I said in the post I did put it together for my staff- in Melbourne...of course teachers and schools should follow their own state/country guidelines to privacy and security and I always recommend that. 

 

(3) I don't know if you mentioned this, but Free users get one shared notebook, while Premium users get up to 250. One possibility to avoid issues with notebook limits is to have STUDENTS share their one shared notebook with you.

 

It is my understanding that free users can have as many shared notebooks as premium but only 1 of them can give access to modifying it, as opposed to just viewing...

 

What I have shared is a setup and workflow that has worked for me and many other teachers- I always say that everyone has their own personal touch on how they organise their notes and notebook...it is about finding what works best for each individual user. 

[missb6_2 11]

@Candid,

 

When working with high school teachers I recommend using a tag system rather than a notebook for every student. Like you said- it would get very hectic and with a limit of 250, it you take up a lot of space. 

 

Some specialist teachers I know keep a notebook for each grade and then use tags for students. 

 

At the end of the school year, export student notes and data at the end of the year as a HTML file and store it locally. You can do that easily through the desktop versions...

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Yeah, I know about the blog post, but I think it is wrong. Remember when we were hacked back in 2013 (two years after that blog post was written) and we all had to reset our passwords? That's because our passwords were stolen.

 

"Even though this information was accessed, the passwords stored by Evernote are protected by one-way encryption. (In technical terms, they are hashed and salted.)"

http://blog.evernote.com/blog/2013/03/02/security-notice-service-wide-password-reset/

 

I don't think Evernote is "lying," of course, but rather that they lack sufficient documentation. Your mistake (if one can call it that -- after all, you were quoting their site) is completely understandable. But, it is difficult to make informed decisions without up-to-date documentation, in my opinion. I am kind of a broken record on these forums when it comes to documentation -- sorry Evernote staff!

 

As for the free accounts, you are completely correct. I think the confusion (if there is any here) comes from the terminology we are using (again, documentation is lacking!!!). You can JOIN up to 100 notebooks (just like Premium users), but you can only SHARE one notebook as a free user (Evernote refers to these as "joined" and "shared" notebooks).

https://evernote.com/evernote/guide/mac/

 

I only suggested this possibility in response to Candid's point about having lots of notebooks. I don't think this would solve the problem, necessarily, but it might be another option. Unfortunately, I haven't tested it myself. 

 

Keep up the good work!!

[Candid 167]

 

(3) I don't know if you mentioned this, but Free users get one shared notebook, while Premium users get up to 250. One possibility to avoid issues with notebook limits is to have STUDENTS share their one shared notebook with you. This allows you to have lots more notebooks (if you want them) in your account. One drawback here is that you can only join up to 100 notebooks as a Premium or Free user (250 for Business), and I don't know if this 100 counts towards that 250 notebook limit. If it doesn't, then one nice thing about this system is that you would effectively get 350 notebooks in your account. Yeah, I know that it seems unlikely to be the case, but it might be worth a try to see if this would work!

http://www.christopher-mayo.com/?p=169

 

 

@candid

I wrote a post about how I have used Evernote in the classroom in the past.

http://www.christopher-mayo.com/?p=1724

 

In step #7, I talk about moving the notebooks into an archive. Basically, I selected all of the notes, tagged them with the course name, and dumped them into a single notebook. It works pretty well for me.

 

This idea about having the students share their notebooks with the teacher is genius. 

 

I have read your post in the past, it is a good one. 

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Thanks for the kind words. I don't know if my idea is genius level or not, but it would probably take a lot of the administrative burden off of teachers. If a student can't figure it out, it's easy to tell, because the invitation email from them won't show up in your mailbox. On the other hand, when you invite people into a notebook, there is no way to tell at a glance if they have successfully joined or not. If I were going to have a notebook per student, this is how I would do it.

 

But, I prefer a different approach, for legal, ethical, and practical considerations. I just have a single notebook per class when I use them. Unfortunately, some problems with the sharing (apparently obscure, since I haven't seen similar problems reported), the loss of Evernote's mobile site, and some constraints in my current position make it impossible for me to use Evernote at the moment in my classes (I tried this past semester, but too many students simply could not access the service due to technical issues). Hopefully, that will change in the future. 

 

At any rate, it is great to have lots of ideas out there for getting the most out of digital resources in the classroom, and I'm glad to see Bec's ideas.

[lrainaldi 225]

Great information,

 

I was asked if I would talk about a few technology topics to the school district I live in and my children attend. I am a principal engineer and use Evernote for EVERYTHING!

 

I am working on a proposal now and found your information extremely useful.

 

Thanks!

Lou