Software I use: More on Evernote - teaching, research and students?

About a month ago I wrote a post about Evernote - see Software I use: Evernote - and how I use it in my teaching.

In the post I mentioned a number of useful blog posts over at Evernote, such as, 10 Tips for Teachers Using Evernote – Education Series, and How Evernote helped Me Through College – Education Series.

There are also a couple of other handy posts over at Evernote- Evernote for Students: The Ultimate Research Tool – Education Series and 10 Evernote Tips For School – Education Series. The 10 Evernote Tips For School – Education Series has some particular handy pointers for students including using Evernote to take notes in class, using it as a portable textbook, capturing handwritten notes, making PDFs smarter (premium users only), and organising your research. However, one thing that post didn't cover was using Evernote for team projects and collaborations, which it can do through its shared notebook functionality.

In this post I want to concentrate on the use of Evernote in research.

Using Evernote in Research

Recently I had to design a new online advanced proteomics/bioinformatics practical for my students. In the past when I have done my research online as part of designing such as assessment I would have grabbed any returned results from the browser and saved them as files or web-archives. This worked, but was fiddly, as I would regularly end up with a couple of folders full of grabbed web-pages, none of which were searchable and all of which could only be viewed by opening them in the browser. Not ideal. Plus, the process of saving and re-opening really impacted my work-flow and slowed things down.

What is great about Evernote is I can easily capture the results as they come in and dump them to Evernote). I can even have Evernote set up so I don't get interrupted in my searches by the capture process by using Evernote's nifty little 'capture button' on my browser which when clicked will dump the webpage straight in to Evernote (you can even have Evernote set up so the captured webpage is dumped in to a specific notebook of your choice).

Data capture in Evernote - As I was collecting data from searches on the Internet, and also from data-analysis websites, I was able to keep a record of my work, and the results returned, using Evernotes web-capture system

The net result of all this is I am able to keep a record of all the database searches I performed, and the results returned, as a nice neat and searchable set of data. This makes putting together the training site and setting up an assessment, and keeping a record of the data that were returned for the searches a lot easier. One real unintended bonus was that during the practical session with the students I was able to consult Evernote on my iPad to see if the results the students were getting in their searches were correct, and if not, guide them in the direction of the correct result.

Closing the circle - the students

Above I have just described how I used Evernote to put together an online training session and assessment, how I used Evernote to assist with teaching the class, and how I used Evernote to collate, record (which will help with marking the assessments) and grab a snapshot of the state of the answers returned for database enquiries at a specific time. What I have not mentioned was how I saw the 'circle was closed' in the practical session.

During the practical the students had to complete the training section of a website and then move on to the assessment. In the assessment I was delighted to see that one of the class was actually using Evernote (with no prompting or mention from me) to capture the results from their databases searches and analysis, and to start writing the report. The circle was complete!

Disclaimer: I do not work for the company that sells and/or produces Evernote, and I do not get a 'kick-back' from the company for writing this article. I do, however, routinely use Evernote in my teaching, I do find Evernote extremely useful, and so I thought I would share my experience.

Image: Elephant

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Software I use: More on Evernote - teaching, research and students?

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