Pros
- You can download it onto your computer and your web device and have access to all your notes where ever you have internet access.
- The most interesting and amazing feature I found Evernote's optical character recognition (OCR) feature. If you don't know what this is, it is the ability to recognize handwritten or typed text from scanned images or photos. The way Evernote utilizes this feature is giving the user the ability to search for words these are contained in these images and photos. This is especially useful for me since I can now upload articles that have been scanned to Evernote, and when I search for keywords it will bring up articles that contain them.
- Another thing I found convenient is you can create checklists in Evernote. You can then create grocery lists or to do lists on your computer, and access them from your phone.
- Evernote also has a web clipper tool you can add which will allow you to save or print websites and eliminate all unwanted parts of that website. For example in websites that don't include a printer-friendly option, the web clipper will give you to ability to produce one.
Cons
- It isn't the most user-friendly note-taking tool. The tools within the program itself are not organized in a familiar way. For example, Microsoft word keeps option for new document at the top left while the option for a new note on Evernote is located somewhere in the top middle.
- It'll probably take time to learn how to utilize and maximize Evernote's capabilities. There is an abundance of widgets (or extra tools) that you can add to Evernote and learning how to use each one and determining if it is useful might take some time.
Uses in and out of a classroom: At this point I'm not really sure of how exactly I might use this for a classroom besides organizing my own notes and having students use it to take notes. However, I feel using Microsoft Word and assigning good file names can accomplish this as well. The OCR feature I feel is one of the most powerful features for organization and I could see myself using this often.
Next, I'll give my opinion about Diigo.
Pros
- Diigo has a feature where you can make annotations, highlight, or add sticky notes directly to a web page and save it for later use. It also has a feature to clip out portions of the website which you can refer back to later.
- It allows you to bookmark web pages and add your own keywords to those pages so you can search from your own saved list. You can also share folders of your bookmarks to others.
- Diigo keeps a more detailed web history which you can refer back to.
- The free version of Diigo only allows a limited number of screenshots or clips of websites.
- Diigo is more targeted towards people who save a lot of bookmarks or are bad at organizing their bookmarks.
Uses in and out of a classroom: I find it useful with the ability to share your bookmarks to other students and annotating or highlighting web pages to show to your students, but you could also provide a list of links to websites you want to share and use print-screen or print > save as .pdf and add annotations in that way too. I'm not sure if I find must benefit in using Diigo.
In class we played the game "20 questions". At the end of the game, my professor explained to us the importance of giving students access to our knowledge. In this game, the class had the opportunity to think about the professor's thinking (aka metacognition). As future educators, students will always be trying to understand how we think which can affect how they interpret our instruction and the information we present. This can be beneficial towards encouraging students to think critically. However, we can also give students access to our knowledge by making our thinking visible through processes such as "Thinking out loud". This is beneficial for students to learn the kinds of strategies and skills we use to solve problems, analyze information, and complete other important tasks.
The point you made when you stated "we can also give students access to our knowledge by making our thinking visible through processes such as "Thinking out loud". This is beneficial for students to learn the kinds of strategies and skills we use to solve problems, analyze information, and complete other important tasks." made me think about everything we've done at Scarlett so far this summer. I think a lot of the activities we've done (at least in the literacy classroom)have been exactly this - allowing the students to access our knowledge by "thinking out loud" and sharing our thoughts and connections as we do assignments. Just thought that was a cool connection!
ReplyDeleteJonathan,
ReplyDeleteHumble suggestion: Come up with a place in the cloud (Google Docs, Evernote, etc) to store all of your lesson plans and materials for your student teaching. There WILL be a time when you can't access your Word docs on your computer. I promise.
Very thoughtful post.