LIve Binder - An Online Notebook for Teachers and Students

Like most teachers my lesson plans are located in a three-ring binder. I have hard copies of any electronic documents, presentations and notes located in this binder. I also have a flash drive that contains all of my electronic items. Bookmarks of relevant sites to my curriculum are saved in Google Bookmarks as favorites. I have always wished that I could keep all of these nice and organized in one place. Live Binder is the answer to this wish.

Live Binder allows you to add text, upload files, and upload links to an online notebook. There are options to share the notebook by email or by embedding it on a blog or webpage. I found it to be pretty easy to create a notebook. It took me a while to gather all of my materials that I wanted to place in the book. The sample notebook that I created below is an AP Statistics unit that is a work in progress. I can easily update it with new items or remove outdated items that I no longer need. The link will always find the most current version.

Live Binder is still in beta and I hope that they add a few more features. I would like to be able to copy and paste pictures from my computer to illustrate some of my lessons. Pictures can be uploaded, but won't appear until they are dowloaded. Currently, pictures from Flicker can be added to illustrate the text. I would also like for there to be an option to turn my documents into ipaper. I could have gotten around this by uploading my documents to Scribd then uploading that link to my Binder. However, I was in a hurry and did not take the time to do this.

I see LiveBinder as a valuable tool for teachers. They can use it for personal use to keep track of their lesson plans as I did in my sample. A department could also display common items to all teachers to embed in their webpage for students and parents to access. The science teachers at McCullough Junior High School have created a Live Binder for their common science forms, links, and assignments. It is located at www.livebinders.com/edit?id=2440 This binder is private and requires an access code. The access code was given to students and is on the science teachers' websites. However, I will not list it here to maintain their privacy. It is nice to have the privacy option available for the content in Live Binder. My sample is public so that you can view it. There are also several other public notebooks at the Live Binder site. Hopefully, you will find this application useful for your classroom.

AP Statistics - Planning a Study

Evernote for Education

Evernote is a program that allows the user to create an online notebook. It is a way to remember information from sites that are visited online. I have been using this feature since December. I now have several different notebooks that I have created for different purposes. One of my notebook topics is about a book that I read called Teach Like Your Hair's On Fire by Rafe Esquith. I wanted to remember several of the items the author discussed in his book. I did a web search on the topics mentioned and highlighted the information I wanted to save. With one click I added not only the information highlighted, but also the URL source of the information. In Evernote I was able to add notes and organize my information. I have displayed an evernote widget of my notebook below. Click on any of the notes to see my notebook and the information that I collected.



Both students and teachers will benefit from using this application when researching a new topic online. Evernote can store pdf files as well as webpages. Items stored in evernote are searchable for easy access. Even the pictures can be searched for key words.

Pictures from a digital camera or a cell phone are easily added to a notebook. I bought a Clarifi lens for my iphone so that I could take pictures of student work and other handwritten documents to add to my notebook. The Clarifi lens makes the document clear and readable.