I mentioned this on Twitter last night, and quite a few people were interested in it, so I thought I should write a blog post about my use of Evernote in my class this week.
We’re in the midst of a close study of Animal Farm, in preparation for the crafting of a text response essay. There are no bells and whistles about my delivery of content this week. This is old fashioned class discussion, with a lot of teacher talk happening as we dissect the novel, looking for key plot developments and pertinent quotes that we might be able to use in the upcoming (sight unseen) essay. The students are marking up their novel as we discuss events and there’s an awful lot of sharing taking place.
Yesterday, two students were absent. They were going to miss some critical information, so I opened up my desktop version of Evernote, created a new note, and clicked on the microphone icon. This opened up the option for recording. I made sure my inbuilt microphone on my computer was turned up and pressed record. 77 minutes later I stopped the recording and emailed it to the students. Because I’m emailing through Evernote, the huge file that it is sends and arrives in the student’s school mail.
Five minutes later I got an email from one of the students saying thanks. I checked with her today, and she said the recording was fine, she just had a little trouble hearing some of the responses from students who were further away from my computer. Today, all the students were present, but I asked if they would like me to record the lesson. They did, and at least 8 of them asked that I email today’s recording onto them when our lesson was over. I love that they can revisit what we covered, and maybe cross check that they marked up in their novel what we identified as relevant.
Evernote has to be my favourite notetaking and organisational tool. If you’re not yet an Evernote user, you should be. My students were fascinated by it when I told them what I was doing yesterday, and many have investigated it as a result. It has so much potential in school settings, and is something I would like to see students have the option to use. Teachers too!
Lucacept - intercepting the Web 
Oh I’m just learning to harness EverNote to support instruction. it’s really very cool. I appreciate your use of voice recording. Never thought of that. I blogged about everNote just last month, and how it saved one library lesson: http://libraryroom401.blogspot.com/2012/03/evernotejust-might-be-my-new-best.html
Thank you for sharing.
You are very creative! What a great idea, you’ve made me realise that this of course is also possible on the iPad and other mobile devices which would pick up student comments if the teacher walked a little closer to them, as they answered and discussed lesson content.
With iPads common in our senior years, students are expected to ask teachers first if they can record lessons. There are many digital citizenship issues here, but when the teacher initiates the recording this presents a different range of issues. Your students were obviously agreeable to having their recorded voices forwarded to their classmates. Well done you!
Great idea about the iPad use with Evernote. Might have to try that out too!
Yes, the iPad microphone is very sensible and record a good audio. I use a note taking app to record some meetings.
Wow Jenny. Another incredible way to apply tech to learning. Thanks for sharing.
Hi, it’s Rosemary Catlin again. After this post I will be posted a summary of my two comments on my blog, and let me just begin by saying how much I have enjoyed reading your blog over the past two weeks. For this class that I am taking, I am required to have Evernote. However, we’ve never had to use it in the class, and I haven’t gotten a chance to explore it very much. I didn’t know it could be used to record yourself during a lecture and such, and then shared with students. I think that’s great for students that have to miss class and even for students who just wish to revisit lecture at a later date.