A few weeks ago, Class Tracker wrote a piece about setting up online note-taking platforms. Whether you’re still a die-hard fan of handwritten notes or you’ve shifted to virtual note-taking, there’s something to be said about the ease and organization that come with online notes. If you are not sure which method works for you, check out our blog post on how to choose between handwritten and typed class notes. Evernote, one of our favorite online note-taking platforms, hosts a wide variety of great features while still maintaining a simple and easy-to-use interface with both free and paid-for plans. Below, we share some of our tips for making the most of Evernote as an academic note-taking tool.
1. Upload a variety of note formats
One great part of Evernote is its capacity for multiple note formats. While many note-taking platforms have stayed simple and just host text, Evernote actually hosts text, images, audio, sketches, scanned documents, links, web pages, and checklists. Not feeling like typing your textbook notes? You could choose to upload a voice memo of you reading or paraphrasing the notes. And if you’re an auditory or visual learner, Evernote makes it easy to listen to and see your notes. Draw a picture, upload an image, or drop a graph into your note to help support your unique learning process.
2. Easily search and organize your notes
Like many note-taking platforms, Evernote offers a quick and easy search tool to find the note that you’re looking for. When it comes to studying for a final exam or writing a final paper, the search tool makes it easy to go back and find old notes or information you might have forgotten about. All you need is one word or phrase to pull up any notes on the subject. Even better, Evernote can search for words within images. So, if you’ve uploaded an image with text on it to your notes, you can search for that text and Evernote will pull up the file with the image. If you use Google or Siri, you can speak to them to write, update or search your notes too. Once you’ve written a few notes, you can organize them into “notebooks” and give them “tags” to easily categorize and find them later. For example, you might make a notebook for each of your classes. Within the science notebook, you might use a tag to describe a particular subject or area of study within science, such as “anatomy,” “cell,” or “environment.”
3. Share with others and access quickly
Lastly, one of the best parts of Evernote is its ability to share notes with others. Even if they don’t have an Evernote account, you can still send a note to a friend or classmate. When it comes to virtual classes, this is a great tool to collaborate with others in an online setting. You’ll be able to ask your classmates questions, compare notes on subjects, and hold effective study groups with the support of Evernote’s sharing function.
Over here at Class Tracker, we know that online note-taking can be really effective and fun. It’s all about finding a note-taking platform that works for you, and then using it to its full capacity. If Evernote sounds like the right one for your needs, then we definitely encourage you to give it a try! Be sure to try all of its features and see how it improves your academic experience.
