Help using Evernote for college

[Johnny McClung 10]

I'm beginning my first quarter of using Evernote to help me with college. I wanted to see if I could get a few ideas of the best ways to use Evernote in my situation. I am attending a college online which I think presents a complication to using Evernote. Typically, the teacher will post Word documents that contain each week's assignments. In the past, I have downloaded these and then uploaded to Google Docs to be able to easily access the documents on any device.

I've thought about instead of uploading into Google Docs to just copy paste into a new note in Evernote. However, this does present an issue. I'm just a few days into this quarter, but in previous quarters the assignment documents I downloaded also had a worksheet that had to be completed and uploaded into my online class. If I copy/paste the Word documents into Evernote, I will have to copy/paste back into Word to upload, potentially loosing key formatting.

I've also thought about just putting the Word document directly into Evernote, but if I'm on my Chromebook (and maybe Android) I will not be able to view, edit or save the document.

I think right now, my best option is to continue using Google Docs. Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions?

Thank you.

[Sherman Dorn 6]

As someone who has taught college (either as a TA or faculty member) for a quarter-century (wow, that's scary...), I'd say you should do what removes friction from getting your work done on time. If I were you, I'd probably use Google Docs for completing assignments that students download and then upload back into a Learning Management System (LMS). But let's think about what EN can do for you (and look around this forum and online--there are about 5-7 blog entries about using EN in college):

1) EN is great for collecting. What do you expect to collect, or what COULD you collect if you learned the common keyboard combinations to clip?

• Your own notes, whether handwritten (and scanned to EN) or typed directly into EN.
  
• Screenshots with important information -- this could be screenshots of lectures, of websites that you find useful for classes, of sources you may want to use for assignments.*
  
• Ideas for assignments that require collection of information.
  
• A portfolio of your course syllabi and your own assignments, either with or without instructor comments. (If you EVER want to transfer credits to another institution, you will often need to provide the original course syllabi and documentation of your own work. EN is likely to be around much longer than any thumb drive or computer you currently have.)
  
• Your financial records related to college -- tuition paid, fees, books, etc.
  
• Contacts -- faculty, fellow students, important staff you may need to be in contact with.
  

2) Er... I'm still trying to work out other uses from a faculty perspective.

* - A free open-source citation software package is available at Zotero.org. I don't know if it will work well with Chromebooks, but if you don't have a citation management system, you should add all the citation information you need in an EN note when you clip a webpage. (URL's are never enough by themselves.)

[Johnny McClung 10]

Thank you. What you mentioned is kind of the things that I was thinking. I wanted to see if there may have been something I was missing. The course information has already been imported into Evernote. I've copy and pasted the assignments into to dos so that I have the information at hand when I look at what needs done.

I did have a question about note taking. When taking handwritten note, usually just the main ideas are jotted down to reduce what is needed to write. But with a digital system the amount is meaningless. If given a document to read, is it important to write or type my own notes? I could just as easily copy and paste the information into a new note. Is there something in reading and note taking to help you learn?

[Sherman Dorn 6]

When taking handwritten note, usually just the main ideas are jotted down to reduce what is needed to write. But with a digital system the amount is meaningless. If given a document to read, is it important to write or type my own notes? I could just as easily copy and paste the information into a new note. Is there something in reading and note taking to help you learn?

You should still winnow, because that forces you to prioritize and listen/read carefully. The reason for not trying to transcribe everything is not because the note is handwritten but because it's wrong for a lecture's ideas to go straight from the speaker to the notes without going through the brain of the student. There are systems out there ("Cornell notes" are pretty popular), but I am not persuaded that a particular system is more important than just taking notes and forcing yourself to summarize, to put things in your own words, to apply concepts to new situations.

[Amie Harpe Longstreet 12]

I am working on a PhD in psychology through an online university, Walden. I am very dependent on zotero. It is an excellent application for managing research material and creating citations and reference lists in APA format in research papers. I especially like that it provides the ability to link one item to another; I find this very useful for linking papers that were referenced in another article. I am a huge fan of zotero and highly recommend it for authors to help create citations and reference lists that must comply with a particular style guide.

The two primary software tools I use for school are zotero and evernote. I use evernote to store class syllabus, reference materials provided by the instructor, my assignments, and, thanks to the firefox web clipper, I save each week’s discussion blog to evernote. I use zotero as my bibliography manager and to store PDF versions or clips of web pages for each entry. I feel that a gap I have is how best to capture and make notes about each of the articles I have in zotero. On the PDF, I can use the annotation features to highlight and make notes, but they are not easily searchable without opening the particular PDF. I have been using the notes feature in zotero to capture my high-level summary of each PDF, but the notes are not as flexible and searchable as notes in evernote.

I am struggling to come up with a good way to integrate zotero and evernote. Evernote is not a citation manager; and zotero is not intended for capturing and organizing notes, ideas, and thoughts. I need a solution more effectively use zotero and evernote together to help me manage my research, writing, class assignments, and dissertation research. I know that evernote recently introduced the ability to create note links, but I do not think that copying and pasting a note link from evernote into the notes on an item in zotero is the right way.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

I am working on a PhD in psychology through an online university, Walden. I am very dependent on zotero. It is an excellent application for citations and bibliogrophis.

[Johnny McClung 10]

Thanks for the responses. After a few weeks, I've got a more or less have a system down. I've been pasting all information given to me into Evernote this includes syllabi, reference materials and assignments. I've been turning the assignments into to-dos. When I receive a document that will need to be submitted, I upload to Google Docs and include the link in the appropriate assignment so that I have quick access to the document from my work flow (Evernote).

I do not do a lot of research (for now), but took a look at Zotero. It looks pretty interesting and will have to take another look when it comes time.

Taking notes will probably be a constant struggle for me. The instructor has supplied a list of "things to know." It appears that the Cornell system will work well with this as I can have the "things to know" on the left, then put the answers on the right side. Any system or trick to help me take notes would be greatly appreciated.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

I am working on a PhD in psychology through an online university, Walden. I am very dependent on zotero. It is an excellent application for managing research material and creating citations and reference lists in APA format in research papers. I especially like that it provides the ability to link one item to another; I find this very useful for linking papers that were referenced in another article. I am a huge fan of zotero and highly recommend it for authors to help create citations and reference lists that must comply with a particular style guide.

The two primary software tools I use for school are zotero and evernote. I use evernote to store class syllabus, reference materials provided by the instructor, my assignments, and, thanks to the firefox web clipper, I save each week’s discussion blog to evernote. I use zotero as my bibliography manager and to store PDF versions or clips of web pages for each entry. I feel that a gap I have is how best to capture and make notes about each of the articles I have in zotero. On the PDF, I can use the annotation features to highlight and make notes, but they are not easily searchable without opening the particular PDF. I have been using the notes feature in zotero to capture my high-level summary of each PDF, but the notes are not as flexible and searchable as notes in evernote.

I am struggling to come up with a good way to integrate zotero and evernote. Evernote is not a citation manager; and zotero is not intended for capturing and organizing notes, ideas, and thoughts. I need a solution more effectively use zotero and evernote together to help me manage my research, writing, class assignments, and dissertation research. I know that evernote recently introduced the ability to create note links, but I do not think that copying and pasting a note link from evernote into the notes on an item in zotero is the right way.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

I am working on a PhD in psychology through an online university, Walden. I am very dependent on zotero. It is an excellent application for citations and bibliogrophis.

Hi. I am working on a PhD in History. It seems to me that everyone has their own combination of applications that they use for their research. You have to find what works best for you, and a mix of Zotero and Evernote is a lot more advanced than some of the systems I have seen.

I wrote about my system at length on my website. I put pretty much everything into Evernote.

http://www.princeton...ganization.html

Regarding citations, though, I have stopped using citation software entirely. It might have something to do with my field (we cite page numbers) or my research content (lots of Asian sources, so translated titles and romanized readings inevitably need to be edited), but I eventually found the whole system too cumbersome. For me, it is much easier to just copy and paste as needed. I have one Master List note of every research item -- primary and secondary sources. I also have several other bibliography notes for different projects. I have found this so much easier, I can easily access it on any device, and I have total control over how the text is displayed.

(1) I store all of my PDFs in Evernote (I think I have about 500 books, articles, and other research items) where they are searchable (I do OCR on them ahead of time, because they are usually rather large).

(2) I take notes on them separately with note links back to the original sources. I got into this habit when I was studying for my general exams. I found it useful to read through my notes separately. I still browse through them on a regular basis to refine the notes, add comments, and refresh my memory. Having an iPad / iPhone to do this in the gym or in bed is quite nice.

(3) I use note links to tie the bibliographic citations in the Master List note to the PDF sources in Evernote and the reading note I have created for each source. Everything is in one place, accessible from anywhere, available anytime, and completely searchable.

Hope this advice helps!

[Ganesha 19]

I do not do a lot of research (for now), but took a look at Zotero. It looks pretty interesting and will have to take another look when it comes time.

Your time for research will come! One of the biggest mistakes I made while I studied was to ignore my thesis and the work I do today.

I might be good (that is what I know now) to attend to a course like 'the art of sientific work' or 'how do I write my thesis' at the beginning of a study. In such a course you can learn what you need for research and how to collect information in a correct manner.

If you do it on the right way from the beginning then your whole study will be much more easy and you will have lot of free time to spend at starbucks while you classmates struggle with their thesis.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

There are some great resources out there, as Ganesha said. I would recommend:

in print: The Craft of Research

on the web: http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/advice-for-students-10-steps-toward-better-research.html

[AmericanKozzak 0]

I am working on a PhD in psychology through an online university, Walden. I am very dependent on zotero. It is an excellent application for managing research material and creating citations and reference lists in APA format in research papers. I especially like that it provides the ability to link one item to another; I find this very useful for linking papers that were referenced in another article. I am a huge fan of zotero and highly recommend it for authors to help create citations and reference lists that must comply with a particular style guide.

The two primary software tools I use for school are zotero and evernote. I use evernote to store class syllabus, reference materials provided by the instructor, my assignments, and, thanks to the firefox web clipper, I save each week’s discussion blog to evernote. I use zotero as my bibliography manager and to store PDF versions or clips of web pages for each entry. I feel that a gap I have is how best to capture and make notes about each of the articles I have in zotero. On the PDF, I can use the annotation features to highlight and make notes, but they are not easily searchable without opening the particular PDF. I have been using the notes feature in zotero to capture my high-level summary of each PDF, but the notes are not as flexible and searchable as notes in evernote.

I am struggling to come up with a good way to integrate zotero and evernote. Evernote is not a citation manager; and zotero is not intended for capturing and organizing notes, ideas, and thoughts. I need a solution more effectively use zotero and evernote together to help me manage my research, writing, class assignments, and dissertation research. I know that evernote recently introduced the ability to create note links, but I do not think that copying and pasting a note link from evernote into the notes on an item in zotero is the right way.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

I am working on a PhD in psychology through an online university, Walden. I am very dependent on zotero. It is an excellent application for citations and bibliogrophis.

" I save each week’s discussion blog to evernote."

THAT'S BRILLIANT My online class kept going down this week and I needed to reply to threads but couldn't because I couldn't remember where in the descission I was.

thanks,

--stefan