Getting Organised

In the past year I have found that I have been moving towards a more paper free way of of working, relying more on the files on my laptop and iPad. The main reason is very practical: I lose pieces of paper. I put down the page that I need to use and its not to be found again until 6 months later under the cupboard next to the broken pens and old rubber, gathering dust. My intention is to be completely organised but reality dictates the success of this at times: I can be frustratingly disorganised.

Putting that aside, its time to start again!

With the new year having started, comes a sense of new possibilities and fresh starts. It is also a time to consider the plans for the coming year: What will I do? Where will I head to? What worked well? My goal for this year is to be more organised regarding my program, lesson plans and student files. It has been a  bit haphazard up until now.

Evernote is an online file system, where documents, notes, pictures, sound files can be recorded and stored. The main ways that I have currently been using it is for note taking and student Profiles. There are a suite of apps that can be used with Evernote, such as Penultimate and Kustomnote.

I have found Penultimate a great tool to use for taking photos of students projects and work and writing notes about them as I discuss their work with them. I have also used it as a digital whiteboard projecting it up onto the screen so students can see what is written. Its especially good for things like Anchor Charts, where students brainstorm their ideas which are then written in the notebook.

After some research and looking at Bec Spink's Blog: Miss Spink on Tech, it was time to start going about organising things in a way that was considered and easily accessible. I made notebooks just like I make folders on the computer. I then organised these into stacks so that the Notebooks that related to each other were easily found. Tagging each file helps search for the files when they are needed quickly.

When using Evernote previously, I copied and pasted tables and forms into the student files. In the course of my research however I came across the Kustomnote app, where templates of forms are easily made and placed into each notebook. The following tutorial from Kate of Purely Paperlesss shows how to create a new template. 

I created templates to create Student profiles, which made the whole process very quick and easy once they were set up. Each student will have their own file where I will be able to add photos and notes throughout the year.

The next task is to create templates for lesson plans and the terms program! 

I'm looking forward to the prospect of being so much more organised.

Any more suggestions for using Evernote and Kustomnote, or even Penultimate are welcome!