Me? Organized? ICT Thank-You

So every year and every term I tell myself, this time I will stay organized.  After about a few weeks my binder and back-pack are a disaster.  Pens go missing, highlighters run out of ink, and loose papers are everywhere.  Every time I ask myself "How did you let things get to this point?" The famous answer "I don't know!"  

As I learn more about different on-line resources that will help me get organized I am intrigued. Once the initial fascination wears off I become nervous that due to my lack of technology skills this attempt be a disaster.  

One of the sites I was introduced to this week was Evernote.  I liked some of the features that my professors were telling me about like the ability to download a page from the internet and highlight important information or post-it sticky note.  When I go to bring that page up through Evernote the highlighting and post-it note are still there.  Another feature is that you can tag people in notes and that allows them to access that note (this is one feature I cannot wait to figure out).  All the notes you post can be categorized.  Right now I have about 4 'notebooks'.  These notebooks allow me to organize my notes.  Since all I need is internet access, I can access my notes from any computer.  This helps limit the ever so popular excuse of not being able to find your notes because you lost them.  This is what mine looks like so far.

I feel so much more organized and this time I don't believe that it is just a phase.  Since I have internet access at school it is convenient for me to take notes in class on Evernote.  I have notebooks for my different classes as well as a notebook for homework.  This right now is my favourite notebook because all I have to do to make a note of what I need to do is pull up my homework notebook.  This makes it so much simpler to see from previous dates what I have completed and what I am still working on.  It also saves me time rather than pulling out my agenda, finding the right date, and making a note of the new assignment or reading.  

These features got me to thinking about my future classroom.  This site would help me to teach my students how to pick out important information.  Students would have their own site.  IF I am lucky enough to work in a school where students have a computer at their desk I would recommend that students type their notes in their on-line notebook.  This would eliminate the excuse to go to their locker because they grabbed the wrong binder or left their assignment.  They would also be able to save their research on this site and make notes on the pages they saved from the internet.  

I sure as I learn more about the site and become more familiar with the features my vision will change.  Right now I am loving how organized I am, which for me is a huge accomplishment.  

So excited for what I will learn next!!!

~ Miss Laing