5 Ways School Administrators Can Use Evernote

Evernote has rocketed to the top of my most-often-used applications in recent months. It is one of the first desktop applications I open in the morning, and one of the last ones I close in the afternoons at the end of the day. Last spring, I purchased a premium account, and it has been well worth the money. Evernote is clearly an administrator must-have application. Below are some of the ways I use Evernote as an administrator.

• Use Evernote to collect all the notes, bits of information, and copies of digital information that come across your desk during the course of a day.  As a school administrator, there is a constant flow of things into my office, and keeping it accessible and organized is a must. I don't use a file cabinet or paper copies of anything anymore. Everything I do is electronic. Evernote gives me a place to organize this information for later accessibility. I can copy and paste pertinent parts of emails or documents and paste them in an Evernote note in my "Inbasket" notebook. I am even thinking about getting a scanner so that I can scan and include these items in my electronic files too. Evernote makes collecting easy, and it makes organizing what you're collecting easy too.
• Use Evernote to create and maintain To Do Lists. I have a To Do List every single day, and I create it electronically and place it in my To Do List notebook. This allows me to easily transfer those "undone" tasks to the next day’s To Do List. Since I have the Evernote app on both my Android phone and my iPad, I can access my To Do List at any time and wherever I happen to be. Because Evernote allows me to put a "checkbox" in my lists, I can check off tasks as I do them too. There's satisfaction of being about look back through my To Do Lists after a period of time and see what I have accomplished.
• Use Evernote to collect ideas and information from professional reading.  Those that know me, know I usually read four or five books at a time, and that I am a copious note taker. I love collecting thoughts, ideas, quotes, and snippets of information from my reading. I have a "Professional Reading" notebook in Evernote where I place notes from my reading. Because I can access Evernote from practically any where, I have constant access to them.
• Use Evernote to make instant copies of engaging web information. My reading includes following a number of blogs, and a daily list of about 200 RSS feeds that I follow through Google Reader. While I can use Diigo to bookmark an engaging article, Evernote allows me to snapshot the whole thing and place it in an appropriate Evernote notebook. For example, I recently stumbled on an article about Problem-Based Learning I wanted to share with staff at a later date. I clipped it and placed it in my Inbasket notebook for later action. Evernote is an easy and functional way to collect web information and organize it.
• Use Evernote to share administrative notes or project notes. I must confess that I haven't fully utilized this capability yet, but I can see occasions when I might need to allow another administrator access to my working notes on a project. Or, I might need to collaboratively work on a project and with Evernote, I can a project notebook with whomever I desire. Evernote’s simple collaboration features make sharing notes easy.

Evernote’s Desktop App Interface

I've found Evernote to be one of the most useful day-to-day applications in my job as a school administrator. For me, its simplicity, its organizational features, and its accessibility on multiple devices make it indispensable. I can create notes on my work desktop, and through the magic of synchronization, it appears on my iPad, my Android  phone, and on my laptop at home. It is a must-have application for administrators. To create an Evernote account and download its desktop software, check here. For those teachers and technologists that want to engage administrators in using technology applications, show them how to use Evernote. What are some other ways to use Evernote as educators? Please share.

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Engaging More Administrators in Using Social Media

How do we engage administrators more in using social media and in developing a Professional Learning Network? That was the question at the center of my presentation at the annual North Carolina Technology in Education Society’s (NCTIES) 2011 conference in Raleigh, North Carolina. As I point out in my presentation, which is included below, the media horror stories often give administrators from the school level to the superintendent level pause when it comes to using social media tools, and there have been no shortage of those stories:

• Pennsylvania Teacher Posts Comments about Her Students on Her Blog
• Massachusetts Administrator Quits after Posting Comments on Facebook
• Facebook Photos Gets Assistant Principal in Hot Water
• 7 Students Suspended for Posting Derogatory Remarks about Administrator

And so the many stories go. With all this negative publicity, it’s easy to see why administrators run in the other direction when someone tries to convince them to engage in social media.
But the reality is that so much good can come from engaging in using social media on a professional level. What have I learned from using it? Here’s the truth about what I’ve learned so far by engaging in its use.

1.  It has allowed me to network not only locally, but nationally and internationally. I have engaged in sharing information with other educators and administrators across the United States and Canada. I’ve been able to exchange ideas with an administrator in Saudi Arabia, a teacher in India, and a technologist in Australia. Social media is a tool that fosters the ability to build and maintain global network connections.

2. It provides me with a perpetual flow of educational resources and information. Social media tools keep me connected to the latest ideas regarding education reform and policy. It provides me with a steady stream of technology resources to share with my staff and with others. It is a daily dose of professional development. Social media is a tool that connects me with cutting edge information in the field of education and beyond.

3. It helps me develop a 21st century understanding of social media’s place in our global society. As a consumer of social media professionally, I know blocking access to it will not make it go away. It has an established place in our information society, and treating it like some dirty magazine sitting behind a counter in the convenience store is not helping me be a 21st century educator, and it is depriving students of access to an important part of our culture. Using social media helps me to understand that its value far outweighs the horror stories in the media.

4. It allows me to engage in a global conversation about education with educators and others around the world. There is an international debate occurring about education reform, the proper place of technology, and many other education topics. That conversation is happening through social media tools, and the administrator who wants to take part in that discussion, needs to engage in the use of those tools. Using social media gives me a means and a voice in what is happening in education today.

How do we get more administrators engaged in the use of social media and engage in developing professional learning networks? It’s an uphill battle to get them to look past those horror stories, but perhaps we can get them to look beyond those. Those who continue to try to wall out that which they fear, will find the world has passed them by.

Getting administrators connected

View more presentations from John Robinson.

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