Best Tips on Using Evernote to Keep Superbly Organized Class Notes

Do you have trouble keeping your class notes organized? Wouldn't it be great if you could quickly search your notes for the upcoming test's terms? You can with Evernote!

I absolutely love Evernote! It is such a great little piece of genius software. And it's Free!

It is useful for so many things, but I'm going to focus on it's usefulness for school work and taking, and organizing, class notes.

Evernote is a wonderful note-taking application that allows you to synch your computer(s) with your mobile device (iPod, iPhone, phone) and an internet account (accessible from any computer). Your notes are not only accessible from anywhere but safely tucked away from computer failure in the cloud.

Ways Evernote helps you organize

Notebooks

Evernote allows you to organize your notes into Notebooks. You could make a separate notebook for each class to easily organize your notes by subject. You could also make notebooks for To Do Lists, Homework Assignments, After School Clubs, etc.

Titles

Each of your notes can be given a title. You could use the date, the topic covered in class, or the chapter from the book.

Tags

You can tag notes to allow for very simple searching. This is especially useful if a teacher jumps around a lot from lesson to lesson. You could also tag notes as "Biology Exam 1" or "Spanish Quiz 3" to allow for simple pre-test studying.

Text Notes

These are your basic typed notes. You can of course copy-and-paste material here as well. This text is easily searchable - just use the magnifying glass feature. You can copy and paste photos, figures, or diagrams into these notes as well.

Web Clips

Does your teacher reference certain websites? Or have his/her notes posted on a website? You can easily clip them and add them to your notebooks.

Photos

Photos can easily be uploaded (you could take a picture of a figure in the book with your phone and upload it in seconds). Text in photos IS searchable. Evernote does this part for you magically.

Audio Notes

You can record audio notes as well. This would be useful when you ask the teacher to explain something 'one more time.' Or if you need help pronouncing a word in a foreign language class.

Premium Features

Evernote is free to use but they do offer a premium account with extra features for only $5 /month or $45 /year. Premium features include:

• 16 GB monthly allowance of uploads (free account is 60 MB /month)
• Add any file type - including Microsoft Office Documents (Word, PowerPoint, Excel)
• Advanced collaboration - you can allow others to edit your notes
• Priority for support

The Premium account certainly gives you a great upgrade. The huge increase in monthly allowance would allow you to use pictures of written notes if necessary because of school policy regarding laptops. Also, the ability to import PowerPoint files would be a huge help given how many teachers give out their PowerPoint notes.
However, if you're not sure, try out the free account first and decide if Evernote is the right tool to help you organize your class notes (and your life).

Some Tips from an Avid Evernote User:

1. If a website is all text, copy and paste to avoid the nasty formatting that sometimes occurs and to save more of your 60 MB allowance.
2. If you can't upgrade to the Premium account, or rarely need to import PowerPoint, you can copy and paste the "Outline" version into a text note in a pinch. Click 'View,' then 'outline' in PPT or Keynote. It's not the best, but it's better than no notes at all.
3. Try 'Edit,' then 'Paste without formatting' to get a cleaner note when copy-and-pasting.
4. You can change the default font and size under 'Evernote, preferences.'
5. If you want to clip webpages, download the Evernote Web Clipper for your browser.
6. Use "Favorites" on your mobile device to save notes to the device. This is especially useful if you have an iPod touch and you want to study on the go when you won't have a wifi connection.
7. Check out the Evernote Trunk to see hardware, applications, and notebooks that might improve your Evernote experience.