Last year I wrote a post about how Evernote has dramatically improved how I report on student progress. As report writing time has now crept up again for Australian schools, I thought it was the perfect time to write about my developments in this process.
At the beginning of the school year, from the very first day, I have been collecting an array of student work quickly, efficiently and productively all within my Evernote account. The types of things I have collected about my students include-
Samples of writing
Audio recordings of reading
Videos of student explanations and answers to maths problems
Student reflections (written and recorded)
Anecdotal notes
Reading group notes and assessments
Photos of students working, managing their learning and demonstrating teamwork
Learning goals and achievements
Copies of pre and posts tests and assessment tasks
Records of home reading and homework habits
As a result, when I pulled out my iPad to begin writing reports last weekend, I was again, pleasantly surprised to feel so at ease and confident in writing quality reports for my students in a fraction of the time it would have taken me two years ago (before Evernote). I didn’t have to carry tub loads of books and assessments home because I had all the data I needed at the tip of my fingers, ready to go! I love that there is no need for comment banks as all student assessment data is personal and individualised, just the way student reports should be.
Within my Evernote account I have created a Notebook Stack- ’2013 Student Assessment’, within this stack I have created a notebook for each of my students as well as notebooks to document small teacher groups for reading, writing and numeracy. Within each of these notebooks are notes filled with what my students can do, their areas for improvement, learning goals and evidence of things they have said, done and completed in class. This evidence of student learning will also form an integral role as we prepare for our mid year three way conferences.
I am not denying that writing student reports is a time consuming process, it is, but with Evernote it is much easier and takes away all of the stress! What I hope many of you reading this realise is that you can get some hours back! If you want more hours to yourself in May and November each year…it’s time to do yourself and your students a favour- download Evernote and start tomorrow. My advice? start using Evernote to do one new thing a week. Before you know it you will be amazed at the possibilities. The use of Evernote to document and analyse my student assessment data has made me a better teacher. I am so much more accountable for keeping track and I never lose anything!
How do you track student assessment in your classroom?
Today I held an Evernote Meetup at my school in Craigieburn, an outer suburb of Melbourne. It was great to see many educators come out in the cold wind and rain for the event and to share in an afternoon of ‘green’ food and Evernote stories! Being the only Australian Evernote Ambassador, most of my interactions about Evernote generally happen online through my blog and Twitter, or when people in ‘real life’ will listen to me! It was fantastic to meet so many Evernote users and people who want to get on the amazing Evernote band wagon!
It was wonderful to hear about the great ways so many teachers are already using Evernote for themselves and with their students. I shared about how Evernote has changed my teaching and assessment practices and discussed many of the wonderful Evernote Trunk partners. I loved watching and hearing about how other educators are using Evernote and I loved that these teachers were excited and eager to start using Evernote straight away.
When planning lessons and thinking about topics I am going to teach, I always ensure I research to see what other teachers have done, to get new ideas or to clarify my thoughts and understandings. I’m also a Masters student so am constantly reading articles on the web and am now in the habit of ‘clipping’ these articles or things I may want to refer back to at a later date, into Evernote. I have never been a good ‘bookmarker’, I tried social bookmarking, it was a fad for a while but I gave up. I also have saved bookmarks to my local devices but the inability to access these across platforms annoys me quite a bit. I love the way I can save different websites and articles I find right into my Evernote account.
The Evernote Web Clipper allows you to save anything you see on the web quickly and easily straight into your Evernote account. You can clip a full page, single article or just the URL and save it to a designated Notebook and add tags. Your web clips then become searchable within your Evernote account. Doing this allows me to have all of my information at the tip of my fingers, right when I need it and across my multiple devices.
It gets better…Evernote Clearly might just be my favourite Evernote tool yet! Do you ever get frustrated at annoying adds that catch your eye when trying to read something? Or find it frustrating when the menu bars take up nearly half of the screen? Clearly makes blogs, webpages and articles clean, clear and easy to read. Now you can read these pages free from distraction and even change the theme and look of the page to suit you and your style. Once you have used Clearly, you can then capture the page to Evernote! Perfect! Clearly also allows you to highlight text, print a ‘clear’ version (but who prints these days anyway?) and maybe the best feature yet, especially after a long day at work…will even read the text to you with the text to speech feature!
Using these tools, my research, web browsing and bookmarking has clearly become more productive!
Make sure you have the Web Clipper and Clearly installed. Once installed they will appear in the top right hand corner of your web browser.
Once clipped to Evernote it will appear clear and with any highlights you made-
In what ways have you used the Evernote Web Clipper and Clearly?
As an Evernote Education Ambassador, I am holding my first ever Evernote Meetup! On Thursday 21st March, 2013 I have invited teachers and education professionals to my school to share and learn about Evernote together. The meetup is aimed at beginner and advanced users of Evernote alike who want to meet other avid and interested users.
So it is only a couple of weeks before Australian schools return for the 2013 school year and I have had lots of keen teachers contact me in relation to getting organised with Evernote.
Here are my top tips for preparing for your new school year with Evernote-
1. Set up a notebook for each of your students. I like to do this because as the year goes by you will collect evidence of student learning and it is kept all in the one spot, easily accessible and extremely handy when writing mid year and end of year student reports. It is also handy when you have parent-teacher interviews.
3. Stay organised with checklists. Evernote has a nifty check box feature that I use for to do lists, keeping track of student homework and take home reading and curriculum outcomes.
4. Go Paperless with Reading Assessment. If you have an iPad, why not start taking running records using a PDF annotator or the Record of Reading app.
5. Keep Track of your professional development. A great way to organise and keep track of the professional development you undertake throughout the year.
Example-
6. Go paperless with your lesson plans and work program. Last year I went paperless with my work program in Evernote. All of my lesson plans from Term 2 onwards were created in Evernote. This allowed me to have access to my lesson plans wherever I was, when ever I wanted!
7. Tag. I must admit, I think I am the worst ‘tagger’ out but when I do tag, I am grateful I have done so. As an example, I always make sure I tag when working with small groups and am trying hard to ensure I do this when working with individual students as well. In reading sessions, I like to tag the strategy I was working on with students so when I want to check on how my students are going with a particular strategy, I can easily search for it.
8. Use the audio feature. Record your students reading, explaining maths problems or discussing their reflections. What ever you record is a great reminder of what your students have achieved and you can continually come back to to inform future teaching.
9. Take pictures. The best thing about about taking snapshots with Evernote is that it automatically digitizes the content and makes it searchable! Take pictures of student work samples, handouts you are given and more!
10. If you can afford $45 a year…go premium. The premium Evernote features give teachers many more opportunities for sharing and collaboration. Not only can you share notes with others, you can invite them to edit and collaborate on notes and notebooks with you. A great option, especially if you are team teaching or work in a large team of teachers.
Join my shared Notebook- Evernote Examples to give yourself some ideas and see how I use Evernote-
If you are new to Evernote or still thinking about taking the paperless plunge take a look at the following Prezi which gives an overview of how to become an organised and paperless teacher.
What are your tips for becoming organised and paperless this year?
2012 has been a remarkable year. It has been busy and at times demanding, exciting and stimulating. There have been many ups and a few downs but each time I have managed to get back up again! I have learnt a great deal, I have taught a great deal, I have accomplished so much more than I could have imagined, which of course, has left me wanting even more! I have been surprised and I have been shocked but I can happily look back on 2012 and know that I am still in the right place. Being an educator is who I am and I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. I love my job, no matter what it throws at me and yes, some days I may just want to pull my hair out…but I don’t because I know that what I am doing is worth it. There are young people who rely on me everyday to be the best I can be, so I keep going. I don’t give up. I do it for them!
My highlights of 2012 have included:
- This Blog: What a wonderful way to share and learn from others, to engage in professional learning and to reflect on my practice.
- My Class Blog: My very first year of blogging in my class has opened up a myriad of ideas and learning in my classroom.
- T is For Teaching: An article by Jewel Topsfield published in The Age Newspaper. Teachers rarely get the recognition they deserve for the things they do in the classroom, just to be noticed and valued for what I have done is something that I am extremely grateful for.
- Evernote Ambassador: This year I was made an international education ambassador for Evernote. It is extremely exciting to share, teach, help and inspire other teachers to use Evernote to become more organised and efficient teachers!
- My students: I have been blessed with an amazing group of students who have challenged me and nearly everyday teach me something new. Without them I would not have been able to accomplish half as much as I did this year.
Where to in 2013-
- IWBNet Leading a Digital School Conference: I am looking forward to presenting and running workshops about Evernote at the IWBNet leadership conference, my first conference presentation.
- Evernote Ambassadorship: I can’t wait to meet more teachers looking at using Evernote and being able to share what I know with them.
- A new year in a growing school: 2013 will be the third year of operation for my school and I have been there from the beginning- what a privilege to be a part of it.
- Continuing to learn and grow: I don’t think I could ever stop wanting to find out more, I wonder what i will learn in 2013?
My ‘words of wisdom’ from what I have learnt this year:
Give people time- everybody is different, just because what someone else does is not the same as what you would do, doesn’t mean it is wrong
Ask questions- enquire, research, have the want for more, we are always learning!
Smile and be positive- ‘EVERYDAY is a good day to have a good day’ (as my thermo mug tells me every morning)…even if you don’t feel like it…our students deserve the best!
The Evernote Ambassador Program is a global community of selected Evernote users who volunteer their time and knowledge to show others how to become experts at using Evernote in various aspects of their daily lives.
Regular readers of Miss Spink On Tech know how much I love Evernote, in fact a whole page on my blog is devoted to how I use Evernote in the classroom.
This week, it is exciting to announce that Evernote have made me a part of their Ambassador team.
I am looking forward to continuing to learn and share with others about Evernote!
In September and October last year I wrote a few posts about assessing student reading on the iPad by taking running records using the GoodReader app and then saving the assessments in Evernote to have everything in the one spot. This process has worked well for me for more than a year but recently I was reminded of a Record of Reading app (thanks to @richielambert) which I had previously dismissed due to not being able to export the completed record to Evernote. Rich suggested taking a screen shot and saving it to Evernote that way, which would work and is a great suggestion but I found it to be a little clunky and fiddly when in the classroom and on the go. After playing around with the app a little more, I found that you are able to email a completed record as either a .jpeg or .pdf file. By doing this I was able to email it directly to my Evernote account in less clicks (or taps) than taking a screen shot, just a little more efficient.
The Record of Reading app is a nifty idea and unlike annotating a .pdf using GoodReader, it allows the teacher to complete a miscue analysis by simply tapping instead of spending time writing more. I would still suggest using a stylus rather than your finger to complete the annotations.
Another good feature of the app is being able to add all the data- words read, errors and self corrections and then it automatically calculates the accuracy rate. Very handy in a busy classroom!
Ok, after the pros, there must come some cons…I still prefer to record the audio of my students reading in Evernote, that way I can access all of my data the one place and the emailing part is a little annoying but no more annoying than what it was saving an annotated .pdf from GoodReader.
Between this app, Kustomnote and Evernote, paperless assessment in my classroom is getting even easier and more efficient!
Many teachers might look at the poster above and relate to the last photograph…especially at report writing time. But it doesn’t have to be that way!
The time of year is here again to write student reports. For many teachers this time of year can cause much stress, anxiety and worry! Not to mention finding the time before and after school and on the weekends to write a detailed snapshot of student learning for a whole semester.
This year, I am not worried, I am not stressed, I am not anxious. I know that I have plenty of time to get my reports completed because I already have so much information already typed, personalised and ready to go about my students. I have Evernote.
Using Evernote everyday in the classroom has allowed to me to capture student learning on a personalised and detailed level. At any point throughout the day when I am working with small groups or conferencing with individual students I am adding information to student notebooks in Evernote. I also have my report comments from last semester included in the notebooks so I can easily compare and acknowledge student growth, all at the tip of my fingers.
Using this process has also made me realise I do not need comment banks. Using comment banks can become repetitive and at times individual student reports can end up sounding mundane and boring. By having personalised, detailed notes on each students readily available in Evernote, I can simply cut and paste what I have written and change the wording slightly to suit the professional reporting format.
Yes, it still can be time consuming but no longer do I need to carry student work books home or piles of paper and assessment records! At the click of a button, or the tap of a finger I have everything I need in one spot! Easy!
What strategies do you use to help with report writing?
Its been too long between posts about Evernote so alas, here I am again.
I tweeted my Evernote page again this morning as I hope that each time I do, someone new accesses it.
As a teacher, I really don’t understand why other teachers are not using it. If you have all student notes and work samples in one spot imagine how less stressful report writing will be. Yes it still takes a lot of time, but it is MUCH easier having everything in one spot and so easily accessible. In the last couple of weeks at school I have started a ‘Brekkie with a Techie’ morning and I am slowly winning by getting all staff on board and using Evernote.
I am often getting questions from various teachers asking how I set up my Evernote notebooks and notes. As a result I thought I would give you an inside look or tour of my Evernote account. This spiralled into me making a few screencasts, so if you can stand the sound of my voice for longer than 5 minutes, they could be short informative videos to help you, especially for new users.
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