BLOG POST 4- USING EVERNOTE FOR TEACHING
One of
my favorite quotes is displayed outside my office at school. It is a quote by Henry Dowd and it describes
my life as an administrator. The quote
states, “I used to think that interruptions kept me from doing my job until I
realized interruptions are my job.”
There is not a day that I don’t gaze at my list of “to do” items and
realize how difficult it is to check them all off. Being organized is a necessity in my world,
and yet, I often get lost in the day to day issues. It seems that every turn has a situation that
needs to be dealt with immediately. Learning
about Evernote this week has truly given me hope that there are tools at my
fingertips to aid in the day to day hustle and bustle.
Chapel
is an everyday occurrence at Immanuel Christian School where speakers are asked
to give a message to the students. After
learning about Evernote, I decided to devise a notebook for my chapels. About two years ago, one of our sixth grade
teachers begin writing daily devotions that she sends out daily to the members
of the school community. Because I loved
the idea of having a digital notebook to publish and share with others, I
thought it would be a wonderful way for Mrs. Saucedo to organize and digitize
her thoughts, prayers, and devotions.
She loved the idea and registered for Evernote this week. Her devotions span across an audience of
present students and parents, alumni and their parents, and whoever they decide
to share them with. Plus, Mrs. Saucedo has the opportunity to categorize her devotions
into topics which makes locating the right devotion for just the right
occasion. She is also a musician and
having Evernote will help her clip songs and videos to her notebooks. Can you imagine the vast possibilities of
reaching beyond your own circle of influence by using Evernote?
Our AP
English teacher would benefit from using Evernote. She loves the classics and is a huge
annotation fan. The critical thinking
skills that the students learn while annotating will be beneficial when they go
to college. Mrs. Campos loves guiding
the students through a novel and engaging them in deep thinking. I loved the
capability of being able to annotate in Evernote. Mrs. Campos has an innate ability to organize
her thoughts and lessons; however, I feel that she and her students would
benefit by using Evernote. Instead of
using folders she could enter the digital world of notebooks. We discussed it this afternoon and she is
very interested in learning more about the process. She has a conference period where she will watch
our video from David Rivers and I hope to tutor her in the coming days.
We are
blessed at Immanuel to have an incredibly talented art teacher. Miss Berger has years of experience both in
the classroom and as a museum curator. She
is always investigating new artists, techniques, and creative art projects for
the students; therefore, I thought I would see if she would be interested in
Evernote. After meeting with her, she is
all in! Miss Berger devised a plan to
have the children write a paragraph in their notebooks, clip the drawing they
are working on, and provide an auditory explanation of their masterpiece. Fine arts is such a broad category and it is
difficult to break it into categories, but purely art is artistic design;
therefore, a notebook could be titled, Artistic Design. You could also have a notebook for each
artist the students are learning about.
One thing that Miss Berger realized is the benefit of being able to
comment and guide the students throughout the lesson because Evernote is
web-based. She is very excited and wants
to begin the process in the second nine weeks.
Each
day holds so many obstacles no matter what job we hold. To me, it is beyond a blessing to learn new
things and be excited, but what matters even more to me, is a positive attitude
of trying something new from the teachers.
As an administrator I can mandate that teachers do things “my way”, but
that is not my heart. Having the buy-in
from the teachers is a gift to me. They
do have a voice, they do have the largest part in making a strategy work, and
they also must have the heart to follow the path. An obedient heart is God-given, and no matter
what I dictate to happen, the teacher needs to see the purpose and have the
passion to carry the torch. I am truly
blessed to work alongside teachers who make a difference.
Dear Linda,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed your Blog. I am always busy and needing time. I think that I can organize my time, thoughts, and stuffs using Evernote. Reading about how Evernote is being useful for personnel from a Christian School is interesting and a good example showing the versatility of this app. I agree with you about that we have to keep a positive attitude and be aware of the trends that can be help us to improve our teaching experience. However, love we what we do is very important.
Thanks for sharing it.
Maria
Hello Linda, I hope this semester is going great for you. It appears that you have become very familiar with this type of technology, I really enjoy your ideas and I plan to use some of your ideas for my class. I know this will assist you a lot, especially that you are a Principal. Good post, and I really enjoy reading them all.
ReplyDeleteHello Linda,
ReplyDeleteI really liked your quote, thank you for mentioning it in your post. My job aside from teaching is to assist staff. I have felt like that many times and I feel that I can not get to complete my things because I am constantly interrupted. I will post that quote in my office to remind my self that indeed that my job is interruptions. I liked how you are using evernote for your self and to also offer it to your teachers as an excellent tool. I agree how evernote can be a great tool to not only keep up with the to do list but have it for your records. Thank you for sharing!
Linda,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed your post this week. How amazing is it that you are sharing what you are learning real time and other educators are able to benefit. I love the different ways teachers in your school will be able to organize a create in Evernote. Many administrators expect technology to be implemented in the classroom but are not familiar with how that technology works. I love that you can mentor those who chose to use Evernote.
Hi Linda, I think that Evernote will provide teachers and administrators the tools to organize their information. I agree with you this tool is at our fingertips. I like your idea of having a digital notebook to publish and share. Evernote can help organized and digitalized images, articles, videos and it can be used for any purpose.
ReplyDeleteHi Linda,
ReplyDeleteI too had a students that used Evernote in AP courses. The problem that I had in this situation was that students were finishing the assignments to quickly and because of this the classroom got out of hand sometimes. I think that a teacher needs to be able to set up challenging assignments and monitor their engagement. The teacher must match the creativity of the students in order for teaching with evernote to work.