5 reasons why you should use Evernote

Evernote is one of my favorite online tools.  I use it on my Iphone, Android tablet and laptop to gather information and jot down thoughts and ideas.  Here are 5 reasons why you should give Evernote a try:

1.  Never forget a thought or idea

Ever had a really awesome idea or something that you thought of and wanted to write it down before you forgot it?  With Evernote, you never have to forget anything.  With my Iphone app (here's the Itunes store link for it) I can quickly launch the application, create a new note or edit an existing one and type in the thought or idea.  Once you're done, that thought is now in your world of Evernote--it will be on my laptop, tablet, and on the web at evernote.com.  

2.  Organize and catalog online content

Since one of my teaching certifications is Composite Social Studies, I love to read and save articles over history, economics, and politics.  Evernote has truly been an awesome tool for me to use this year because we are in a election year for the President of the United States.  With the Evernote webclipper, any time I run across a article that I find interesting and want to refer to later, all I have to do is click the webclipper, select the notebook I want to put it in, and it's done.  Here's an example of the Google Chrome Evernote webclipper I use:

It's also nice that I can assign tags to the article that I've just clipped for even more organization.  This saves me all kinds of time and hassle. 

3.  Sharing made simple

With Evernote, sharing content and notes has never been easier.  As soon as a new note has been created in your Evernote account, you have the option of sharing it several different ways.  You can share via Twitter, Facebook, Email, or even via link directly to the note.  Here's the link to a article over Ben Bernanke that I clipped a few months ago.  You also have the option to share an entire notebook so your users can access all of the notes in that notebook.  With this capability, you can share one link to your students where they can access all class lecture notes.  Thus, with Evernote you have one central "hub" to which you can share your content.  

4.  Simplify other online tools with Evernote

Evernote in itself is completely awesome.  However, once you realize that there are other online websites/tools that also use Evernote with their services, it makes it all complete.  There are a wealth of apps for Iphone and Android that you can combine with Evernote, check out the Evernote "Trunk" to see what you could be using with Evernote:  http://evernote.com/trunk.  

5. It's Free

With Evernote, you can have the option to get a premium account or you can just keep the basic (free) account.  Here's what you'll get with a free account:

• 100,000 Notes; each note can be a maximum of 25 megabytes (mb) for free users and 50mb for Premium users.
• 250 Synchronized Notebooks (including Notebook Stacks). All 250 notebooks can be shared. There is no limit to the number of Local Notebooks (which aren't synced) you can have.
• 10,000 Tags.
• 100 Saved Searches.

  (evernote.com)

Event though I have a premium account, I never maxed out my usage even when I had the free account.  

Hopefully these reasons give you some insight on why to use Evernote.  Of course, these 5 reasons are just a start to the numerous things you can use Evernote for.  I've also created a "Evernote for Educators" livebinder with a lot of articles on how others are using Evernote.  Feel free to browse:

Evernote for Educators

Funny comic about Amarillo, TX weather

A friend of mine found this and emailed it to me.  Just had to share this because it's so true of the weather in Amarillo, TX.

My Moody Gardens Trip

Wanted to share my photos from when I went to Moody Gardens last month.  If you've never been to Moody Gardens, I highly recommend you go.  You can find out more about Moody Gardens here: www.moodygardens.com

LearnBoost Lesson Planner

Recently, I wrote about a lesson planner from Teaching Channel.

Learn Boost also has a similar lesson planning utility which allows teachers to gather resources (urls, state standards, attachments) all at one central location into your learnboost account.  

Here's what the basic template looks like:

   

Again, best part of this...it's free!

Twitter and GOP Candidates

With the GOP race for the presidential nomination nearing a end (there's still two candidates in this race: Mitt Romney and Ron Paul and the number of delegates to win is 1,144) I was curious to see how popular (follower wise) the candidates are among those of us on Twitter.  Here's are the results I found:

Mitt Romney:

Ron Paul:

Newt Gingrich:

Rick Santorum:

(Resource: Twitter.com, date 5/6/12)

Anyone find the results surprising?  Newt Gingrich by far reached out to the Twitter nation during his campaign, while he was still in the race.  Of course, he utilized Twitter as a campaigning tool by encouraging his constituents to tweet with the hashtag #250gas.  

As of today, however, we look at Mitt Romney and Ron Paul--the two remaining candidates for the GOP presidential nomination.  Mitt Romney easily defeats Ron Paul in the number of voters by roughly 330,000.  With that being said, this raises the question, "Does the number of followers the candidate have really mean anything?"  

Again, going by the results, Newt Gingrich easily had a larger "fan" base on Twitter than any of the other candidates.  However, he ended his bid for president of the United States several days ago, which suggests that the number of followers a candidate has on Twitter doesn't necessarily translate into votes during the race.  

So, one may question on whether or not it helps a candidate's nomination prospects by using social media tools to get their message across.  Of course, the results on Facebook may be a different story.  Stay tuned for a future blog post on that.  

The race to the Republican National Convention has been a long one, but come August we shall see who takes the the nomination to face President Obama for President of the United States.   

Teaching Channel Lesson Planner

Teaching Channel provides an abundance of resources for all teachers--new and pro. They also have a great tool for teachers to get organized, the "Lesson Planner". They also provide a browser extension "Save to Tch" that you can simply click and save the website into your lesson planner on the Teaching Channel website. With this handy little tool, you can capture resources and videos directly from the Teaching Channel Website or anywhere else on the web that you may run across.

This feature is similar to the Evernote clip it browser extension in that you can save info while planning a lesson without having to "bookmark it" into your internet browser.

The best part about Teaching Channel is that it provides this for teachers all for free!

Texas

Above is a picture of a Bluebonnet, known here in Texas as the "Texas Bluebonnet".  The flower is the official flower of the state of Texas and is widely spread across central, east, southeast Texas (about.com).  This is a personal picture that I took while around the Huntsville, TX area a couple of months ago.  

  

Speaking of Huntsville, TX, above is also a picture that I took of the tribute statue they have of Sam Houston--first president of the Republic of Texas in 1836 (pbs.org).  The statue is just outside of the city of Huntsville, TX on I-45.  Here's more info about the Sam Houston National Forest: http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/gks02  

Really just wanted to share these photos (more to come) of some sight seeing here in Texas.  If you ever have the chance to visit Texas (or even if you live in Texas), I highly recommended you take time to go see both of these beautiful parts of the state.