This is another post that was prompted by a reader's email. The email
was looking for a list of recommended note-taking tools. I've reviewed a
lot of note-taking tools over the last five years, but I have never
made a list. So here's my list of seven great note-taking tools for
students and teachers.
InClass is a free iPhone and
iPad app that could be a very useful tool for students carrying those
devices. InClass provides students with tools for taking text, audio,
and video notes. Students can also use the app to take pictures of
hand-outs, slides, and other valuable information that they see in
class. Taking notes is not all that
InClass
can be used for. It can also be used as a task management tool to help
students keep track of their schedules and due dates. To share notes,
images, videos, and schedules students can connect InClass to their
Facebook accounts.
Color Note
is a simple note-taking app that I've been using on all of my Android
phones for the last year (yes, it's been a rough year for phones in my
life). Color Note offers a sticky note environment, a calendar option,
to do list options, and the option to share your notes via email and
sms. Color Note does offer an option to password protect your notes so
that even if someone takes your phone, your notes are still protected.
Save Meeting
is a meeting recording app for iOS and Android devices. The app allows
you to record the audio of your meetings, transcribe the audio, and
share the recordings and transcriptions with others. The transcription
options that I tried were somewhat limited (30 seconds of automatic
transcription and 5 minutes of manual transcription) but should be
sufficient for recording quick notes during a meeting. Save Meeting uses
a freemium pricing model. At the free level you can save up to 1,000
minutes of audio.
Notes.io offers a simple platform for taking and sharing notes. To use
Notes.io
just go to the site and start typing your notes. When you want to share
your notes just click "short" to have a shortened url created for
sharing on Twitter, Facebook, or wherever else you like. It really
couldn't be any simpler to use.
No list of note-taking tools would be complete without mentioning
Evernote.
Evernote can be used by students to take notes on the web, on their
desktops, on their Android devices, and on their iOS devices. Their
notes can be automatically synchronized across devices whenever they
connect to the web. Notes can include text, images, links, and more.
Click here to read about how I am using Evernote.
mySchoolNotebook
is a service for taking, saving, and sharing notes online and offline.
The basic purpose of mySchoolNotebook is to provide a place that
students can take and organize notes from all of their courses. Students
can create notebooks for each of their courses to which they add text
and image notes. To use
mySchoolNotebook
you do have to have a Facebook account. By signing into
mySchoolNotebook with a Facebook account students are able to connect
with and share notebooks with their friends taking the same courses that
they are taking. mySchoolNotebook is available to use on the web and as
an
iPhone/iPad app. Students can export their notebooks as PDFs if they need to have a paper copy of their notes.
If your students are already in the habit of using Google Documents to
create documents, presentations, and spreadsheets it just makes sense
that they take notes in Google Docs too. Teach your students to create
folders for each of their courses to help them keep their notes
organized. While the
mobile versions of Google Docs aren't perfect, they can be used for some basic viewing and editing.
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