Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Note taking via the Web (Evernote)

As students launch into an assignment, they need ways to keep track of the many bits and pieces that they discover. Some of these are in written form (printed books and articles), others are e-books, online articles (journal, magazine, newspaper), and websites.

One of the most popular free solutions to this is a product/service known as Evernote. With Evernote, you create an online account, and can use the online service to keep track of these many notes (which are searchable). But even better, you can install Evernote on a PC or Macintosh. And you can install it on a Windows Mobile device or iPhone.

And you can have it automatically synchronize all of these various incarnations of Evernote on different devices. So whether you're online or offline, you've got it available. Evernote also makes a plug-in for popular Web browsers, to make it even easier to grab that information from web pages. Oh, and did I mention yet that Evernote can be installed on a SanDisk U3 flash drive, so that it can be run on computers where it isn't installed?

I'll have more to say about Evernote later after I've had more personal time to play with it, but for those students (and faculty) who need an ever-present tool to keep track of the information they find (in all of its little bits), this may be an excellent solution.

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