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Hi-

I posted this in the Education section - but i didn't get any hits.

Does anyone know the situation with sharing notebooks via public links?  I thought I read here that Evernote discontinued this for awhile, or are going to discontinue this.

 

I am a high school teacher that used Evernote for Journaling/Science Notebooks last year, and I want to try it again.  Students create a notebook and open a public link that they share with me.  I keep all the links in a spreadsheet that allows me to access all student notebooks.  I can't go the route of individually sharing notebooks, because of the limit of 100 shared notebooks.

 

 

Thanks for any help or advice!

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Sorry.  I figured out Evernote indeed doesn't support public sharing anymore.  This leads me to a second strategy:

 If I upgrade to a premium account, I can have my students create free accounts, and share their notebook with me?

 

Do I have that right?

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I'm having a lot of fun conversing with myself in this forum...

 

Public sharing:  currently supported...  Tried it on my computer - no problem.  However, this is not possible through the app on a mobile device (iPhone or iPad).  All my students have iPads, so...

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hi Jlund

 

Sharing should work a with your students. And yes Evernote still supports sharing. You have to set up from your desktop, I think, just right click on the notebook and click share and chose how you want to share. I not sure if you can  share from your iPad

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Thanks JohnDM -

The problem is that all my students have iPads. Therefore, they would be working from the app (Evernote Web doesn't work on the iPad). I want them to create their notebooks and then share them with me, giving me access to their work. This worked great last year (when students could share publicly). Pictures of lab setups/results, tables, graphs, analysis, etc. were available to me in real time, in an efficient chronological way.

It's too bad public sharing isn't an option from the student iPads as it used to be. I don't mean to sound flippant, but I think I'm done with Evernote. I will be using an app called Notability combined with the convenience of shared Google Folders.

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Every tool has its use. Google documents might work. Still Evernote will work if you have a premium account

 

Premium accounts can have many shared Notebooks. You would set each up, presumably one for every student. I'm assuming less than 40. You would set permissions so they can edit the shared notebook with their name, and they could access that from their iPad easily

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Thanks-

I wouldn't want to set up the accounts for them.  They can set them up and share their notebooks with me.  This would include about 140 high school students.  Seems crazy, but it's better than collecting and reading 140 composition notebooks over a weekend!

 

Although it's live, Google Docs have severe limitations of inserting media like pics/graphs/tables via the app - tables don't even show up on the iPad, making it impossible to use for a high school science class.

 

Uploading pdfs from iPad to a shared Google Folder is ok, but they have to upload - it's not live.

 

I'll consider a premium membership...  I'm not sure.  Public sharing from their iPads and I'd be hooked, and probably go Premium anyway.

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As you know, there are 2 ways of sharing notebooks: either via a private shared link and/or by publishing it as a public notebook...

 

It's not necessary to have a premium account to create a public/ shared notebook. Also, I have never had the ability to create a public/ shared notebook directly from iPad/ iPhone. I don't think we ever had that ability. One has to share a notebook/ make it public on the desktop or web client... and then it will be accessible as such on all platforms thereafter. The web client, of course, is not accessible on iOS... nevertheless, one can join a notebook on iOS (whether privately shared or public), no problem... just by following the public/ shared link. Again... you cannot share a private notebook link/ publish a public notebook directly from the iOS clients... but you can join shared/ public notebooks. Your students will have to have previously shared a private link/ published a public notebook - before you are in the classroom setting using iPads. Just keep in mind that you will not be able to, in class, get them to share/ publish a public notebook... but from your end, you could easily share a link for them to join, which can and will work on iPad (If you yourself have access to a laptop in class). It doesn't seem to be that much of a hassle... except if an exercise required them to create a public/ shared notebook link on the spot and share it. If not, I'm sure your students have access to an alternative laptop/ PC at home. 

 

Also... here are the latest limits (which I'm sure you've seen):

 

Number of joined notebooks and Business Notebooks (owned or joined)

  • Free: 100
  • Premium: 250
  • Business: 250

Number of people joining a single notebook

  • 250

Number of people joining a Public Notebook 

  • Unlimited

 

 

This would mean that you'd need a premium account to join 140+ student notebooks. If you're going to be using Evernote that heavily, whether for personal or professional purposes, I highly recommend a premium account. You'll see lots of upgrades here and there. It's absolutely worth it. If that's not a feasible option... then one suggestion, if the situation permits, would be to have students work in pairs. The reasoning behind this is that free users can only allow access to modify one shared (private link by email) notebook... so... a pair of students may name the one notebook using both names... both having access to modify the contents of all notes in their shared notebook. They may want to keep separate notes or collaborate on all. On your side, you'd then join about 70 notebooks and edit them if you have been sent the private links via email. If, on the other hand, you had a premium account, you could join up to 250 public/ shared notebooks. You would have each of your students use up their one privately shared AND modifiable notebook with you... that way, all of them get to share a private link with you and have their notebook contents editable by yourself... or just visible if it's a public notebook link.

As a premium user, you would be able to annotate PDF documents (using Evernote's annotation tools) when revising compositions (so maybe get your students to create a PDF once they're done)... which they will be able to visualize on their end when any changes are made... or you could just edit their MS Word documents using "Track Changes"... or edit their Evernote notes themselves and correct the hard way, by using different colors to indicate what was deleted/ included, etc. On your end you get an annotation summary of PDFs... on their end... I'm not sure... it would be nice if they get to see an annotation summary included if they create PDF docs to be revised, even if they don't have premium accounts. But either way, that's my recommendation... to get them to use their one "free pass" and share a private link with you so that you can edit any of the contents of their notebooks.

 

 

EDIT: By the way, here's a recent post I just found which explains what I've written above... with screenshots. It shows how even a Free user can share and have ONE notebook editable/ modifiable by other users. It explains too that free users can share multiple notebooks... but only one can be editable by extending permissions to others. I haven't tested this out... but it seems that students could theoretically still work in groups and share the same notebook with one another AND with the teacher (you). This would allow them to work in groups for some projects/ assignments, other than essays/ compositions. 

 

http://www.documentsnap.com/evernote-premium-user-share-free/ 

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Another suggestion, off the top of my head, is that you could get students to set a reminder for just one composition (note) at a time in their shared notebooks. That way, when you are in your "All Notes" context, you'll see just those reminders from those shared notebooks in the Reminders list which is pinned to the top of your notes list on desktop, each under the students' names (notebooks) - or by accessing the Reminder list through the green alarm clock in iOS. 

 

Also, if you put all of those shared student notebooks into one stack (Class X), you would be able view all those reminders in the Reminders list of that stack context in the notes list on desktop (or by tapping on "View all notes in stack" in iOS).

 

* ...But make sure to explain to students that they should only have one reminder set in that shared notebook of theirs at a time... the current assignment/ composition being graded.

 

That way you don't have to locate a composition in each individual notebook, one at a time. Or else, give them a specific tag to put into the title of the note... and on your end you could filter them with an Evernote search... but I'd still recommend the Reminders list thing, simply because the compositions will also be shown under the notebook section (name of the student) one by one in the Reminders list... which you could then check off (in the Reminders list) as you finish revising them.

 

Another thing you can do is duplicate a note on both desktop and iOS within the same notebook... then you could correct the duplicate note/ composition - both of which can be compared by the student later. 

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Hi-

I posted this in the Education section - but i didn't get any hits.

Does anyone know the situation with sharing notebooks via public links? I thought I read here that Evernote discontinued this for awhile, or are going to discontinue this.

I am a high school teacher that used Evernote for Journaling/Science Notebooks last year, and I want to try it again. Students create a notebook and open a public link that they share with me. I keep all the links in a spreadsheet that allows me to access all student notebooks. I can't go the route of individually sharing notebooks, because of the limit of 100 shared notebooks.

Thanks for any help or advice!

At the moment, you can share a notebook with your students and have them post in there. I've used that with some success in classes. We currently have public notebooks, but this could disappear any day, as it did a few months ago when Evernote abandoned them. They revived the feature, but no promises have been made, and the comments in the news suggest they are rethinking sharing. I stopped using them in classes, because I didn't want this kind of a disruption to the class to suddenly occur -- i'd rather incorporate tech into the classroom that i can count on for the entire semester (or academic year).

if you are interested, i have step-by-step instructions here for what i have done with the notebooks.

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

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They revived the feature, but no promises have been made, and the comments in the news suggest they are rethinking sharing.

 

 

That would be a bummer indeed if shared notebooks were done away with. Where did you read about their rethinking sharing?

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They revived the feature, but no promises have been made, and the comments in the news suggest they are rethinking sharing.

 

That would be a bummer indeed if shared notebooks were done away with. Where did you read about their rethinking sharing?

I think the fact that they abandoned a core feature that has been around for several years is a pretty clear indication of what they want to do, and, in conjunction with this, the CEO has called it "rudimentary" and "vestigal," so I think the writing is on the wall. I do hope they change their minds, but I haven't seen any indication of that, so it is difficult to plan for the future (the academic year).

http://recode.net/2014/09/02/evernotes-phil-libin-has-come-to-bury-microsoft-office-not-praise-it/

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You're right...

 

<< Doing that means expanding Evernote, particularly on the communications front. Its current communications tools, Libin admits, are more rudimentary than functional. Although there are tens of millions of shared notebooks today, only one in ten Evernote customers is using the product collaboratively at least once per month. “It’s kind of a marginal use case,” Libin said. “That’s really something that should be closer to 50 percent.” >>

 

I would think that 1 in 10 was significant. Anyways, there's a couple of things that don't add up... I mean, there's a thread that was opened up on the forums by Gbarry for suggestions as to Evernote's role in the education area. Surely this is one of, if not, the most useful feature for educators. I think by its nature, many people would have shared notebooks... but very few of them. That doesn't diminish its importance even if it is rarely used.

 

How about divorced couples who would prefer not to use Work Chat to collaborate?... but rather a shared notebook they could share kids' academic stuff that both need to be aware of? I reckon that most people would at some point want a feature like shared notebooks... but when they get around to discovering a very real need for them... it might be too late.

 

There are also tens of billions of Evernote notes that are not accessed each month... does that mean they should be deleted if they become inactive for longer than a period? Nope... they sit there until we need to access them.

 

I see that article was from September 2nd... maybe he's since changed his tune? Was that before shared notebooks were brought back? 

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Thanks for all your help/advice folks!

During last academic year (2013-2014) my students were indeed able to create a public sharing link with their iPads.  They then would paste that link into a Goolge Form that I created, which organized all of my student Notebooks in a Google Spreadsheet.

 

I suppose I could have all my students create a public link (at home or in the school computer lab).  

BUT...

If public sharing went away, I'd be in trouble.

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Thanks for all your help/advice folks!

During last academic year (2013-2014) my students were indeed able to create a public sharing link with their iPads.  They then would paste that link into a Goolge Form that I created, which organized all of my student Notebooks in a Google Spreadsheet.

 

I suppose I could have all my students create a public link (at home or in the school computer lab).  

BUT...

If public sharing went away, I'd be in trouble.

 

Yep. That's my conclusion as well.

 

Public sharing is nice, but I don't want to invest time and energy into it if it is going away. I have stopped updating my public notebook and won't be using public notebooks in classes again unless I hear that Evernote is committed to keeping it around. The problem is that, even if they say they plan on keeping it, that is just a plan, and plans change. I guess I would need to know that they consider public notebooks to be part of their core product. Otherwise, like features that come and go (related notes on iOS, database size on iOS, font control for the interface on the Mac, etc.), I have to say that I would not be willing to depend on it, especially in the classroom.

 

As much as I like public notebooks and sharing, I would be fine if Evernote decided to abandon them, because they have to do what they think is best for the service. The problem is that it could quite literally happen any day. We only found out that public notebooks were abandoned after they had already abandoned them. Just think if you were depending on them for a class. So, for me, I think the key is to have clear communication with users and a commitment to signaling changes in advance.

 

I've seen some indications that communication is improving these days. Hopefully, the trend will continue.

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Just read this article about how the folk in Hong Kong and China are getting around censorship issues by sharing articles through Evernote:

http://www.companiesandmarkets.com/News/Information-Technology/Cloud-computing-solution-to-Chinese-censorship/NI9607

Although they could be using shared or public notes, I imagine that they're most likely sharing notebooks… to avoid having to send links by email/externally. The articles would update automatically across all shared notebooks.

In light of this… I think Evernote is probably going to take shared notebooks more seriously. Also, I'm sure that news about censorship issues is great exposure for Evernote globally.

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Just read this article about how the folk in Hong Kong and China are getting around censorship issues by sharing articles through Evernote:

http://www.companiesandmarkets.com/News/Information-Technology/Cloud-computing-solution-to-Chinese-censorship/NI9607

Although they could be using shared or public notes, I imagine that they're most likely sharing notebooks… to avoid having to send links by email/externally. The articles would update automatically across all shared notebooks.

In light of this… I think Evernote is probably going to take shared notebooks more seriously. Also, I'm sure that news about censorship issues is great exposure for Evernote globally.

 

I doubt it very much. Evernote has a presence in China with its Chinese service, and I don't think this publicity is welcome (from a business perspective). In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the public sharing of various materials that they don't especially want to see shared (pornography, viruses, etc.) has been a headache for them. Much better, I imagine, to keep the sharing within constraints (basically, people you know and have invited to join). I could be wrong, of course, but I have seen no indication from Evernote that they are interested in keeping public notebooks.

 

As for taking shared notebooks more seriously, I imagine they will, because Phil Libin pretty clearly stated that they wanted to improve them, though it will probably not be the public kind. 

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Anyways... In the article you mentioned (from 2 months back), Phil talked about the use of shared notebooks being marginal. Whether that's in general or just privately shared, I'm positive that they are reevaluating the importance thereof - as well as the use thereof most likely shooting through the roof of late in that region, making shared notebooks a lot less marginal.

 

If shared notebooks got more exposure globally as a result, I think that bodes well for both the public and shared notebooks. I imagine that the Chinese would be making use of privately shared notebooks. Not public. Thus the information is private, and will not be tracked over the 'net... and the Chinese government, unless they raided peoples' homes, would have no way of validating what is spoken of in the media or measuring the scope of its use. They would simply know that it existed as a possible means of conveying otherwise censored material.

 

I venture to say that the better shared notebooks do, the better things look for public notebooks as well. Also... when they brought public notebooks back, it came back within a new menu format. Even if public notebooks were way underused compared to shared notebooks, it is still a way of clearly distinguishing between Publish "To allow anyone to access with a link" VS Share "With people to work together". Very smart... it serves as a means to highlight shared notebooks better than if public notebooks did not exist.

 

Have you ever seen a significant feature disappear and then reappear as quickly as public notebooks did - or just plain ever? I think it's a positive sign. 

 

I think this is fantastic exposure for Evernote outside of China. People will be like, "I've got to take a look at this shared notebook/ notes thing they're talking about." 

 

Either way... the Chinese have found [another] way to get around tight censorship control. And, for now, it works rather nicely.

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