Lesson Planning with Evernote

Lesson planning is a huge component of any educator's classroom.  We have to breakdown the instruction into several considerations to give our students the best means of learning the objective--i.e. what is the objective of this lesson, what resources will I/students use, what activities will be incorporated, etc.  Once it is all said and done, a lesson plan can be bursting with content and resources--which can be quite overwhelming for the teacher.  Wouldn't it be nice if we had a "central hub" to gather all of our resources for quick and easy access?  Enter Evernote.  

The more I get hands on with Evernote, the more I'm finding out about the extensive ways in which Evernote can be used in education.  One way that Evernote is making a teacher's life easier is by making lesson planning much easier and streamlined.  Two educators that are apart of my PLN on Twitter, Melissa Seideman and David Andrade, are also huge fans of Evernote.  I recently asked if I could share their experiences with using Evernote and they agreed.  Here's their testimonies:

Melissa Seideman:

Lesson Plans

The first set are screen shots are of my lesson plans. I got the idea of lesson plans using Evernote from twitter and I will never go back to any other type. I organized each class into a separate notebook and I created notes for each unit. The hardest part was setting up the lesson plans but once it was set up it's so easy to just enter information. 

Here are Melissa's screen shots for lesson planning:

Example 1:

Example 2:

Example 3:

Example 4:

I find Evernote for lesson plans to be one of the most time saving technologies I have implemented into my classroom. I have my lesson plans on every device thanks to Evernote. I can make a change with a simple click on my phone, ipad, or computer. Every change syncs and keeps me organized. I am also making notes in each lesson to change if I teach the same course next year.  I have also shared my lesson plans with members of my department as well as my principal. I highly recommend using Evernote for lesson plans. 

Using Evernote for Student Portfolios

My seniors are doing a final portfolio project using Evernote. The project is very detailed with each step of the project. It took a few days of getting students adjusted to working in Evernote rather than opening word, but the progress is beautiful. They shared their project notebook with me and I can see every change as well as the progress each student makes.   I attached a few student projects. I also created a shared notebook that I shared with them such as my how to guide, what if I am absent, and a sample portfolio layout. This project is truly digital in every sense including the directions for each project work day. 

Here's Melissa's screen shots for student portfolios:

Example 1

Example 2:

Example 3:

 Example 4:

Example 5:

Evernote is a great way to teach our students to be digitally responsible, organized, and literate. My hope using Evernote they will find other uses for cloud computing as well as ways to successfully use technology outside of school in the real world. 

You can connect with Melissa on Twitter or on her blog (Twitter: @mseideman, Blog: Notanotherhistoryteacher)

David Andrade

Evernote is my main lesson and resource organizational tool. I have notebooks setup for lesson plans and lesson resources, along with notebooks for things to do, things to research, and things to share. My lesson plan notes are set up by unit and have the objectives, links, resources, and attached files (like handouts and lab packets). I also have notes setup by week that I use to keep track of where each class is and to schedule my plans out. I can easily share resources and information with my students or colleagues. I have notebooks for faculty meeting notes, ideas for future lessons, Android tips and resources, technology support, and personal notebooks for financial notes and account information, recipes, travel plans, and much more.

In the image below, you can see my lesson plan notebook. It has my schedule for each week with what I am going to do in each class, each day. I also have notes with my unit and lesson plans, links to other resources, notes, and I have attached the files I use with each class.

Lesson Plan objectives:

David's post on winning Evernote premium for himself and his classes for a entire year:

I just won a very cool contest Evernote hosted for educators. Along with 9 other teachers, I won a year of Evernote premium for me and all of my students, along with training and support to implement it with my class.

I have been using Evernote myself for years and always share it with my students, but this will be my first year really using it with them. I'm learning more about sharing notebooks and setting up groups and classes with Evernote. The first webinar from Evernote was great and we have a Yammer group for support, as well as more training from Evernote throughout the year.

Students have already been using Evernote to take notes and upload files from me and attach them to their class notes. Many are also taking pictures of notes on the board and uploading them to Evernote. I'm also having them submit assignments to me via Evernote. Each class has a notebook and the students tag anything they send me with their name for easy sorting. This will become their online portfolio. Students can share notes with me or email me files right into Evernote. 

They are getting so used to it already, that when I say "where should you save this?" they automatically answer Evernote. 

You can follow David on Twitter or his blog (Twitter: @Daveandcori, Blog: Educationaltechnologyguy)

I highly recommend you follow Melissa and David, they have shared some great things involving a vast area of education.  

What do you think?  Give Evernote a try.  

     

Extra-Life: Children's Miracle Network

Children's Miracle Network: Extra Life

Last year, I participated in the donation event for the Children's Miracle Network, Extra Life.  Extra Life is an event where thousands of "gamers" commit to playing a total of 24 hours of video games and get donations from friends, family, and everyone concerned in the medical care of children.  This year, the goal is to play 24 hours of video games by October 20th, 2012.  

With many thoughtful donations last year, I was able to raise over $100!      

This year, I'm raising my goal even higher.  If you are willing make a donation, my goal is to reach $150!  Even penny that is given goes straight to the Children's Miracle Network, specially to BSA (Baptist St. Anthony's, a local Children's Miracle Network Hospital in Amarillo, TX).

Help me reach my goal!

Again, whatever you can donate, I would greatly appreciate it.  Remember, every dollar that I receive will go towards the Children's Miracle Network.  I have until October 20th to reach my goal!

Click here to donate, or you can also click on the donate widget on the left of my blog that will direct you to my donation page.  

Don't grade student's binders, grade their Livebinder

I've actually had off work this week for the first time in a very long time.  So, I've decided to look back over when I was a student teacher and reflect on what went wrong and what went right.  

My Student teaching days

I student taught 12th grade Economics in a low socioeconomic part of the district.  Some of my students had jobs to help pay for their parent's bills and others just had a less than ideal home life.  That being said, however, I loved all of my kids.  There were days that were rougher than others, but the good days always trumped the bad ones.  

The one thing that I have thought about numerous times since my student teaching days, about 2 years ago, was how my co-op teacher and the other teachers graded student's notebooks.  The classroom that I was in was shared between my cooperating teacher and another teacher, both of which required students to have spirals with notes and glued assignments to be graded later.  All the binders from all classes from both teachers were "organized" into stack-able bins one on top of another.  Of  course, some of the classes had close to about 30 students, which when they are all piled into the bins, they tend to fall over or fall out.  

That was a issue for me on a weekly (if not daily) basis.  I had spirals go missing, one student accused another student of stealing their's, and not to mention they would occasionally fall apart from wear and tear.  When it came time to do the grading,  it took a very long time just to go through one by one and make sure that everything was in place.  Besides the fact that they weighed 5 tons, it was always a uphill battle to keep these things around.  When my student teaching was done, I said to myself that there has to be a better way to do this. 

Use Livebinders instead

The school that I student taught at wasn't up-to-par when it came to educational technology or using it in the classroom.  However, when I finally get my own class, I know the solution to this problem...Livebinders. 

Livebinders is a amazing tool to utilize in and out of the classroom.  It provides the means of gathering and organizing content in a streamlined website at livebinders.com.  Of course, the first thing that I thought about was the fact that I taught in a lower economic part of the district--but I don't buy the whole "we don't have the money" excuse to not have these tools in the classroom.  For starters, Livebinders are free--they will not cost the students/parents/teachers one dime--so money is not a factor when using Livebinders.  

Combine Evernote with Livebinders

Secondly, some might ask how exactly do you get the student's notes into their livebinder?  The suggestion I would have is simple--use Evernote.  Evernote is another free service that makes organization a breeze.  Sure, you can have students scan there notes on a scanner, save it on a flash drive, have them upload it to their computer or a library computer, save it to their computer file, and then finally upload it into their livebinder, or you can just use Evernote.  Let's look at that procedure again with Evernote:  Use a Lexmark smartsolution printer (about $80.00) that is connected to the student's Evernote accounts, have them scan their notes, upload to Evernote from the scanner, get the unique URL from the Evernote note, and insert into their Livebinder--a lot simpler right?  

But what, you might ask, if you can not afford the scanner?  Students have cell phones--99% of my students had them in class, so I don't see that being a issue of students not having them at all.  With their cell phone/smart phone, they can scan their notes directly into Evernote via the Evernote app.  They can now get to a computer, grab the link, and insert it into their Livebinder.

Making grading easier

Now that you have students upload their notes into their Livebinder, you can easily access the student's livebinder and grade accordingly.  Students can have tabs in their Livebinder, named "Class Notes", for easy organization.  They can upload the scan into a subtab of the "Class Notes" tab with the title of the notes or even the date.  No 5 tons of paper to sort through, no missing spirals, etc.  This isn't the end-all solution to this problem, however, I would much rather do grading this way compared to dealing with student's actually hard copy notes.  This is just a suggestion that might make things easier in the classroom.   

Thoughts?    

  

Making Teaching Easier with Teaching Channel

Earlier this year, I wrote a short post over the Teaching Channel lesson planner.  It's a great tool for teachers who want to gather all their resources while preparing their lesson plans.  However, Teaching Channel has a ton more resources than just the lesson planner.  Here's a look a some of their resources in more detail:

Teacher Workspace

What is great about Teaching Channel is that it provides a "workspace" for teachers--a place to save videos, lesson plan resources, and notebooks of notes over videos.    

Here's a snapshot of what your workspace would look like:

With your workspace on Teaching Channel, it provides a central "hub" of your selected resources so that you don't have to spend time searching for something you previously saved.  

Videos

This is one of my favorite tools that Teaching Channel offers.  On the Teaching Channel website, there are several professional development videos (which is constantly growing) over subject areas such as Math, Science, and Social Studies.  Here's one I liked from the Social Studies selection over the American Revolution:

What is also great is that you can search through the library of videos by subject, topic, and grade level.

Lesson Planner

As I've stated before, I've only briefly discussed the lesson planner from Teaching Channel.  However, the lesson planner is a solid collection tool for teachers to use and it deserves more detail.

The first thing that you'll want to get before beginning to use the lesson planner is the "lesson planner plus" extension for your web browser (once you've created a account, you can get the link to it on the lesson plan page).  This is similar to the Evernote extension in that you can save resources like articles and webpages.  Once you've decided to use the selected resource, you can choose to save it into your lesson planner directly for future reference.  When you use the Teaching Channel plus tool you can choose to create a title of the resource, schedule a particular month for when you will be using it, and set reminders for yourself to check the resource at a certain point.    

Here's what the lesson planner looks like:

When you save the content into your lesson planner, it will detail the source from where you got it and the date added.  This way, if you are research for material for your lesson plans and come across something you like, all you have to do is save it to your Teaching Channel lesson planner and you can continue on researching.

Notebooks

Notebooks on Teaching Channel are the collection of notes that you've taken on videos from the Teaching Channel library.  If you have ever saved a video and then gone back to it a few days ago and forgotten what you were thinking about at the time you were watching it the first time, this will help jog your memory.

Notice in the image above, on the right side, there is a option to add notes to the video while you are watching it.  This way, when you do go back to it you can read over your notes for a quick reference.  Once you do save your notes on the video, they are saved into "notebooks" on your Teaching Channel workspace for a quick referral of what video and notes you were previously working on.

Teacher Connections

One of the coolest things about Teaching Channel is that it allows you to connect with other educators through the Teaching Channel website.  You can follow educators from different subject areas, grade levels, and roles (teachers, admins, etc).  Once you follow another educator, you can share notes and other ideas from videos.

Conclusion

Teaching Channel has a ton of resources that educators can use to help with their profession.  The website is constantly making updates and changes so I'm sure more good things are to come.  By the way, did I mention all this is free?