Thing 26: Notetaking Tools
My administrator and I have been struggling with finding a good, shareable, notetaking tool all year. Ideally, we'd like a tool where we can share our notes with each other. I like things simple, whereas she likes to be able to use more detail and drill down into nitty gritty. It might be why we haven't hit upon the ideal notetaking tool for collaborating...yet.
The NY Times article on notetaking was interesting, and not surprising. I've been hearing over time that there's a growing body of evidence that people may very well retain information better when they physically scribe notes, rather than type them. I know that I really wished that I could have a little device to type my notes on when I was an undergrad (that was a looong time ago, when Macs were newfangled and Bitnet was this magical way that one of my dorm mates could talk, for free, to his relatives in the Netherlands), but the act of writing everything down that I could was a definite chunk of how I got through college. I found that if I wrote it down, I tended to remember it. Copying pics, typing, and inserting links may not yield the same results.
I do use a combination of hand-written notes to myself ...my family refuses to go virtual with regards to shopping lists, and the calendar in the kitchen is still the default go-to even with our shared Google calendars. With that in mind, Google Keep has been a game-changer in recent months. I do still default to Google Docs when I do more lengthy notetaking (such as when I'm attending a conference)...and/or, if the presenter shares their Google Slides and encourages making a copy, I'll do that and save it into a folder applicable to that application so that I can refer to the Google Slides as needed. But Google Keep, with its simplicity, has been amazing for me to keep my head on straight, especially when I go out to districts to help librarians or do technology integration.
Google Keep allows access in a variety of ways, which makes it versatile. It's one of the G Suite apps available and can be opened as its own application on a desktop; it has a wonderful integration feature where you can open Google Keep while in a Google Doc, and have it open on the right hand side; and I extensively use the mobile app version on my iPhone, which keeps me sane when I'm out and about. Keep itself is very simplistic in how it works; you can take notes, have lists with checkboxes (I use that feature all the time), and there are add-on features such as speech-to-text, coloring your individual notes, and even a remind by location feature (which I tried once, but I think my phone was set to silent, so I don't know if it worked!). My favorite feature is the checklist feature. Rather than try to keep track on a calendar, which doesn't always work when I'm out in a district, I keep checklists, in order, of what I need to do that day in a district, and as I complete each task, I check it off the list. I love that doing that doesn't erase the item; a line is marked through it, and it's moved to the bottom of the list, so it's still there. Tomorrow's list for technology integration includes visiting an LOTE teacher to talk about Flipgrid, visiting a 4th grade classroom to play with a fun tech tool during the last days of school, touching base with a high school teacher who wants to expand his YA repertoire of selections for next year, touch base with 5th grade about the moving up video I created for them, and helping another teacher sort through the classroom collection of books that she inherited from her predecessor. It's a busy day, but Google Keep will keep me on the straight and narrow throughout the day, which I appreciate.
Now, if I could just get my kids to start using a shared Google Keep list for grocery shopping...
The NY Times article on notetaking was interesting, and not surprising. I've been hearing over time that there's a growing body of evidence that people may very well retain information better when they physically scribe notes, rather than type them. I know that I really wished that I could have a little device to type my notes on when I was an undergrad (that was a looong time ago, when Macs were newfangled and Bitnet was this magical way that one of my dorm mates could talk, for free, to his relatives in the Netherlands), but the act of writing everything down that I could was a definite chunk of how I got through college. I found that if I wrote it down, I tended to remember it. Copying pics, typing, and inserting links may not yield the same results.
I do use a combination of hand-written notes to myself ...my family refuses to go virtual with regards to shopping lists, and the calendar in the kitchen is still the default go-to even with our shared Google calendars. With that in mind, Google Keep has been a game-changer in recent months. I do still default to Google Docs when I do more lengthy notetaking (such as when I'm attending a conference)...and/or, if the presenter shares their Google Slides and encourages making a copy, I'll do that and save it into a folder applicable to that application so that I can refer to the Google Slides as needed. But Google Keep, with its simplicity, has been amazing for me to keep my head on straight, especially when I go out to districts to help librarians or do technology integration.
Google Keep allows access in a variety of ways, which makes it versatile. It's one of the G Suite apps available and can be opened as its own application on a desktop; it has a wonderful integration feature where you can open Google Keep while in a Google Doc, and have it open on the right hand side; and I extensively use the mobile app version on my iPhone, which keeps me sane when I'm out and about. Keep itself is very simplistic in how it works; you can take notes, have lists with checkboxes (I use that feature all the time), and there are add-on features such as speech-to-text, coloring your individual notes, and even a remind by location feature (which I tried once, but I think my phone was set to silent, so I don't know if it worked!). My favorite feature is the checklist feature. Rather than try to keep track on a calendar, which doesn't always work when I'm out in a district, I keep checklists, in order, of what I need to do that day in a district, and as I complete each task, I check it off the list. I love that doing that doesn't erase the item; a line is marked through it, and it's moved to the bottom of the list, so it's still there. Tomorrow's list for technology integration includes visiting an LOTE teacher to talk about Flipgrid, visiting a 4th grade classroom to play with a fun tech tool during the last days of school, touching base with a high school teacher who wants to expand his YA repertoire of selections for next year, touch base with 5th grade about the moving up video I created for them, and helping another teacher sort through the classroom collection of books that she inherited from her predecessor. It's a busy day, but Google Keep will keep me on the straight and narrow throughout the day, which I appreciate.
Now, if I could just get my kids to start using a shared Google Keep list for grocery shopping...
Yes, google keep for groceries! :)
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