As a part-time college professor, I love Evernote: I can clip articles, make lecture notes and cross reference assignments between different courses. But the more I get into Evernote, the more I see how my students could benefit from using it even more than I do. Here are five top tips for students who want to use the service to organize their class work.
1. Capture Those Whiteboards
Most of my students have complained about professors who ramble through an equation-intense lecture and erase their scribbles from the whiteboard before students can copy down all of the information. Evernote solves that problem: snap a picture of the whiteboard, save it as a note and actually pay attention to the professor’s explanation.
2. Likewise, Handwritten Notes
Megan Cotter, one of Evernote’s student ambassadors, still likes to take some notes by hand. In a blog post for the company, she points out that those notes can be saved, along with typed notes, handouts and other course materials, in a simple snapshot or by scanning them and saving them as an Evernote file.
3. Set Up A Discussion Board
Evernote has social plug-ins that allow you to share notes and other course materials with classmates. You don’t have to wait for an in-class discussion on an assignment when you can simply set up a discussion board ahead of class.
4. Use Web Clippers For Research
A simple Chrome or Firefox extension lets you clip Web pages for future reference. You don’t have to worry about broken links when you access them later, nor do you have to save all the ads and other distractions. Once a page is clipped, you can add notes and highlight the parts you need.
5. Search Your Notes
You have ten minutes before your calculus exam starts but you can’t remember the forumula for L’Hospital’s Rule. Find it fast by searching your notes. Make sure you add plenty of tags to handwritten notes once you save the scanned pages in Evernote so they’ll be searchable as well.
