Can You Improve My Method?

[ppmw 0]

I research/develop/design/write/rehearse and finally deliver Continuous Professional Development (CPD) courses for Foster Carers. Examples will be courses on Safeguarding Children, Equality & Diversity, Keeping Safe Online, Bullying, Men In Fostering, Fostering Children from a Different Background.

I use Evernote as a repository for web research and scanned paper research, photos and video illustrating the concepts. I then try to build up a working list of subtopics in Evernote and link them (notelink) to the research.

So far so good.

Then it gets messy as I tend to storyboard my presentation on paper (then scan it in to Evernote for backup) and then create handout materials in Word, a script in Word and slides to accompany the delivery in powerpoint. These three 'documents' are saved as PDF and of course I send it all back to Evernote for safekeeping. The PDF's are used for printing and showing at client sites - I use a netbook running linux linked to a projector - PDF files are dependable and quick to navigate back and forth.

It seems a shame to leave Evernote so can you suggest ways to create storyboards and scripts right in Evernote and be able to get the results OUT to save as PDF files? How do you prepare presentations within Evernote?

thanks in anticipation

/Paul

[Michael Hyatt 17]

Welcome to the forum, Paul.

Like you, I use Evernote for collecting and storing my research. I also use it for rudimentary outlining. However, when I get ready to actually put my presentation together, I do that outside of Evernote. I usually write the speech in iWork Pages. Once I am happy with the general content and flow, I move on to iWork Keynote (like Powerpoint) where I create my slides.

All that to say, Evernote is foundational to my speaking prep, but it is not the only tool.

I hope that helps.

[gtuckerkellogg 33]

Paul,

I use Scrivener and Evernote. Scrivener is great for storyboarding. I collect the reference material in Evernote and link to it from Scrivener. it's very easy to have Scrivener point back to Evernote Note links for reference material (although Scrivener, to its credit, can also handle the materials directly). It's also very easy to create PDFs and materials for circulation, although I've not used it for powerpoint: I generally have Scrivener generate LaTeX documents that I process as presentations or articles.

[ppmw 0]

That is a very interesting idea gtuckerkellogg. I have a trial version of Scrivener for Windows and will experiment with that. I didn't know you can link to evernote notes from it or that it creates PDF files. I would love to use it for my fiction writing as well as white papers and the aforementioned presentations. I will report back in a few days, thank you.

[gtuckerkellogg 33]

Well, for presentations themselves, my method may not be your cup of tea, because I generate LaTeX and then use a LaTeX class called Beamer. But you may be able to find a method that works for you.

[chuckjones 0]

I know this topic is several months old but here's a thought. Have you considered adding a table to a note to do your storyboard?

Not sure how elaborate your story boarding is but it seems like you could create a grid and each cell serves as a slide. Create 3 or 4 cells across and as many as you need down. Label each cell with a slide number and then add thoughts, pictures and note links to each cell to build out your plan. Not sure how manageable this would be for large presentations.

I've not tried this but thought I'd provide my 2 cents. I always use Evernote for all my research but then storyboard with a mindmap outside of Evernote.