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Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Evernote to track students?

Before Easter break I attended a session with admin and teachers from my board run by Will Richardson. I've been using Evernote for a few months now to keep track of projects. It works really well for me. As Will was demonstrating Evernote to a very engaged room I got an email about a student I work with. The Internet was wonky at the hotel and even my tethering was poor due to limited reception. I could not access the database our school board uses to monitor and track student success. I threw my notes into Evernote without thinking about it. I've never done this before for student notes. I work with students-at-risk for in a variety of ways. I track report cards and see who we need to work with, I receive referrals from teachers, I work one-on-one with some students, I organize independent courses for some and credit salvage or recovery for others. Until last week, all those lists and notes were in separate places. Nothing connected them. 

Last week when finally getting around to doing the action required by me to support this student, I tried something. I linked in the students information from the database into
Evernote. I brought in his credit recovery assignments and forms. I dragged over a presentation he made on Creative Commons. I took a quick picture of his counselors business card and put it in Evernote. Being the geek that I am, I emailed the only other Student Success Teacher I know who might "get this". Rodd Lucier's (aka thecleversheep) response was "I see it as a data rich scrapbook". Exactly!

So, to track my meetings, credit recovery, parent contacts, remedial support and student work with students at risk I am now using
Evernote. I have created a notebook titled "Student Notes" and each student gets their own note. By tagging each note with key words I can sort and search them by grade, withdrawn, independent courses, credit recovery or IEP.

I wonder, has anyone else used
Evernote or any other good tools for tracking students?

2 comments:

  1. Let's see what happens when good ideas are shared...

    Maybe I can convince you to participate in a brief chat about this so that we can share the idea even more widely. It would be a natural segue from today's rant about 3-ring binders.

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  2. any time. check zoe's tweet with pic of how she uses it to track her students. awesome!

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