Help me organize my teaching life with Evernote
April 26, 2013 2:43 PM Subscribe
I am not sure what combination of tags, notebooks and saved searches I need to use to make Evernote the ultimate teacher's planner. Advice?
Now that I have been a teacher for a couple of years, I am starting to accumulate huge piles of resources. This includes lesson or unit plans, music and video files, craft ideas, worksheet ideas, oral game ideas and so on. I would like to put it all in Evernote so that I can make Evernote my main planner, but I am not sure how to best organize it all.
I read a great tip that you can use a tag 'planner:month' (where month is replaced with each month of the year) so that you can just make a whole bunch of notes with every idea you come across, and then tag them with each month. I like this idea a lot. My problem is that I teach multiple classes. So I want to be able to see the whole month at once, but I also want to be able to filter it so I can see only the grade 1 stuff, only the grade 2 stuff etc. without everything getting lost in a million tags and notebooks and stuff.
I want a workflow that is as simple as possible. Ideally I want to be able to sit down once per term, go through all my notes and then just tag away to put all my games and songs and ideas into a month for use. But that could mean 50 tags per month when you add all the grades I teach! So how do I filter this? Put each grade in a separate notebook? Use saved searches or tags or some combination? What is the simplest and most effective way?
Now that I have been a teacher for a couple of years, I am starting to accumulate huge piles of resources. This includes lesson or unit plans, music and video files, craft ideas, worksheet ideas, oral game ideas and so on. I would like to put it all in Evernote so that I can make Evernote my main planner, but I am not sure how to best organize it all.
I read a great tip that you can use a tag 'planner:month' (where month is replaced with each month of the year) so that you can just make a whole bunch of notes with every idea you come across, and then tag them with each month. I like this idea a lot. My problem is that I teach multiple classes. So I want to be able to see the whole month at once, but I also want to be able to filter it so I can see only the grade 1 stuff, only the grade 2 stuff etc. without everything getting lost in a million tags and notebooks and stuff.
I want a workflow that is as simple as possible. Ideally I want to be able to sit down once per term, go through all my notes and then just tag away to put all my games and songs and ideas into a month for use. But that could mean 50 tags per month when you add all the grades I teach! So how do I filter this? Put each grade in a separate notebook? Use saved searches or tags or some combination? What is the simplest and most effective way?
I've seen many people have success by having one category as notebooks and one as tags. In your case you could have notebooks for each month and then tags for different classes/projects. I'd suggest that way simply because you could tag notes multiple times for classes, individual projects, etc. but the tag would still "live" in the monthly notebook.
You also have the ability to do notebook stacks and to group your tags so instead of seeing all your tags and notebooks at once you can collapse them down into a less busy list.
posted by justnathan at 9:10 AM on April 27, 2013
You also have the ability to do notebook stacks and to group your tags so instead of seeing all your tags and notebooks at once you can collapse them down into a less busy list.
posted by justnathan at 9:10 AM on April 27, 2013
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I cross-tag and create folders for month, for grade, etc. So, my modified lesson for February's introduction to the periodic table will be tagged video, February, Chemistry, Periodic Table, etc.
Conversely, if I want to see everything I did last March, I open the March folder and all my lessons, video links, etc. are there, also cross referenced. Ditto for Chemistry and so on.
posted by kinetic at 4:27 PM on April 26, 2013