Evernote Will Organize Your Life!

Today I will be beginning my two part series for Earth Day! These two lessons will help you reduce paper usage in your classroom, library and school building, while educating your students with great web tools for research and presentation. However, be careful of jealous colleagues when you are suddenly viewed as the “green teacher”. I was told once that I was, “making everyone else look bad and ignorant.” This comment came after I began piloting my paperless classroom. I put a lot of time and effort into reducing paper in my classroom, only to be scoffed at by several colleagues who were not willing to…

1. Try something new after 30 years of teaching
2. Improve their classroom organization and reduce clutter
3. Enjoy their prep period rather than spend it fighting with the copier

Enough about my ranting and on to the content for today! Go GREEN!

Today I am presenting a wonderful web-clipping tool that both teachers and students can use in a variety of ways. The tool is called Evernote. Evernote can be downloaded on to MAC and Windows operating systems and is completely free. This can also be used on smart phones and the iPhone.

Here is an introduction to the basic features of Evernote

Evernote allows you to gather clippings from various websites without having to bookmark every single site you enjoy. In short, you can select the text and photos that are of importance to you! So, let’s consider Evernotes practicality in the classroom.

Language Arts/History

Think about students doing research. The teacher gives his or her students a credible, academically authored list of websites. This list can be posted on the class wiki or moodle in order to save all the future trees that will be planted tomorrow! Students review the sites and find a piece of information they really like on George Orwell. However, time is running out and for most students they would immediately select FILE > PRINT. And what prints out? The entire web page! (Insert old school Mr. Yuck sticker here!). The student takes the 15 pages that just printed out, stuffs it into a folder and forgets that good bit he or she was reading right before the sound of the bell. This is the old way. Let’s have our students try the new way!

Art/Graphic Design

Let’s consider what an art teacher might use Evernote for...

Using Evernote in the classroom is always a great way to help students understand the importance of a “Tag”. Provide students with a mini lesson on tagging and how it can save them time when conducting research.

I hope this has been a valuable asset to your class and look forward to hearing how you use Evernote in your class!