Evernote and my iPhone - a great combination to assist in my research project

I've been thinking about Evernote for quite a while (well, almost 2 years, I just checked when I opened my account) but haven't had the time or inclination to actually use it.  Until now. 

In brief, Evernote is an application to:

• Capture anything: Save your ideas, things you like, things you hear, and things you see.
• Access anywhere: Evernote works with nearly every computer, phone and mobile device out there.
• Find things fast: Search by keyword, tag or even printed and handwritten text inside images.
  [ from the Evernote website]

And it really does everything it says.  And it's free!

I'm just starting to use it now to make notes and capture ideas, images, etc. for my Masters project. This week I went to one of the local university libraries and, instead of photocopying the few pages from a book on research methods I wanted to read, I captured them straight into Evernote, using my iPhone.  I could have just taken the images and saved them somewhere later, but by capturing them directly into Evernote I was able to add the page references and will be able to add notes later.  The bits I copied were exercises to help formulate the design of a research project, so I will be able to read the exercise and make notes into Evernote from anywhere - my laptop at home, my iPhone, or any Web browser - which will then be available to me anywhere. Much better than having photocopied notes and getting some inspiration but having to match up bits of paper or dispersed electornic notes at a later time.

I'm quite looking forward to using Evernote and also pleased to have found yet another use for my absolute favourite device, my iPhone!

If you want to know more about Evernote, I first got interested in it from hearing about it from James Clay's e-Learning Stuff blog:

• Evernote – an online note keeping system

and he discusses it with some colleagues in this podcast:

• e-Learning Stuff Podcast #031: Store it, Tag it, Share it - worth a listen for Evernote stuff and lots more on other tools for storing, tagging and sharing 'stuff'.

James Clay has put Evernote on his Top Ten Web Tools of 2008, 2009 & 2010 - so he is a bit of a fan.  I'm a bit of a fan of James'podcasts which I have subscribed to through iTunes and listen to on my iPhone while walking with my dog.

If you want to know more, and to see how other fans of Evernote are using it, just search on the Web, you'll find lots more.

The free version limits me to a monthly upload limit of 60 Mb of notes.  I can't see me reaching that anytime soon, but if I need more, I don't think I'd hesitate to upgrade to the premium account which would give me a 1GB monthly upload allowance and other extras and additional support, for $5 a month.

#ELTchat - PD on speed!

I took part in my first Twitter chat this morning.  It was amazing!  It all happened so fast, I'd try to answer or ask a question or make a comment and by the time I posted there would be 10 new tweets there!  And so much of what was discussed and shared is useful to me in my teaching, but I'll have to go back to read the transcript or wait for the summary to follow it all. I'll do a new post about the content of the chat, watch this space.

If you get into Twitter, or find a chat session you want to join, then I recommend you get something like TweetDeck, which allows you to have immediate updates - it would be impossible to follow on the regular Twitter app as it doesn't update automatically (or I haven't found how to do it).  TweetDeck also allows me to have a column (channel?) just for the chat but also watch what is coming in on other channels, including any mentions of me - this helped me know when someone in the chat session asked me a question or retweeted something I said.  TweetDeck can also be linked to a service which shortens URLs for tweeting.

I've got Twitter on my iPhone too, and TweetDeck, and have linked it to the Dragon Dictation app in case I want to tweet from there.  Gee, I love this stuff :-)