There are a lot of students that use smart phones, laptops and now tablets in class. Aside from using these technologies to stay awake during lecture, a lot of students use these devices to take notes, jot down assignments and create projects. And thanks to web connected services like Dropbox and Simplenote, using tech to sync up text has never been easier. I like to keep all of my virtual documents together and accessible from anywhere and here's how I do it.
Resoph Notes
I'm not a big fan of taking lecture notes on my computer but I do like to jot down little epiphanies on my smart phone. I do this by using Simplenote, an app available on the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. If you're not using an iOS device you can still get Simplenote on Android by downloading Flick Note and if you're a Windows Phone user, you can grab Simple Paper. Heck, you can even get Simplenote on your Blackberry with an app called Berrynote. Simplenote works great because it syncs to so many other services. Just download the free app on your mobile device and start taking notes. It looks extremely minimal but is incredibly powerful. Once you've got your notes on your mobile device you can sync them to your desktop.
You can head here to create and login to your Simplenote account and you'll see that the notes you've taken have already sync'd to the web. Simplenote provides a pretty nice user interface for browsers but you can also use the note-taking service on the desktop too. If you're a Mac user, Notational Velocity is the best Simplenote client. If you're using Windows, ResophNotes is basically an identical counterpart to Notational Velocity, simple and easy to use. And remember, you don't have to start by taking notes on the mobile first, you can, just as easily use your laptop to take notes and then automatically sync to your mobile device. Another great aspect of using the desktop applications is that you can save the notes as text files onto your computer's hard drive. Simplenote already saves your notes online but it's also smart to back up those files by saving them to another cloud storage service.
Online storage is easily one of the greatest things to happen to students, since saving in "the cloud" means being able to access files from virtually any computer with an internet connection. Students can choose from a number of cloud storage options from Apple's iCloud to Dropbox. Personally I like to use Dropbox because it's incredibly simple and works with everything, including Simplenote, it's no wonder Dropbox made it to the Top 10 free websites every student should know. But besides Dropbox, another favorite service of mine is Microsoft's Skydrive. It works just like Dropbox, but gives users five gigabytes of free storage as compared to Dropbox's two. Skydrive also syncs files from your PC, Mac, iPhone and Windows Phone. Sadly there's no Android support right now but then again, Android users have always had the help of Google Docs.
Google Docs, recently re-branded as Google Drive, is easily one of the best web services to take notes on. A group of my friends and I often use Google Docs to take notes during our three-hour-long Design and Industry class, an elective for me. Google Docs is amazing simply because multiple people can edit and view the document live. You can even chat within the same window making it the most fluid text editing and collaboration service to date. But perhaps the most difficult aspect of 'Docs' is that the documents you create in it are only available online. You can export them to the desktop but that usually leads to formatting issues in your native desktop word processors.
Are you still with me? That was a lot of apps and links but let's put it all together. On a fairly typical day I'm hopping on and off trains and buses, walking to and from class and around the city. I'm a writer at heart so I'm always thinking of ideas to write about and perhaps a light bulb goes off in my head. An idea! Let's say I'm going to write a story about gummy bears. Good thing I have my smart phone with me as I can jot down my gummy bear idea into Simplenote. Eventually I'll make my way home to my desktop or laptop. Now I can fire up Simplenoteapp.com or one of the desktop apps and since I'm a Windows user, I open Resophnote where I find the outline for my gummy bear epic. I type, type, type, and when I'm feeling ready to take a break I just save it to my Dropbox or Skydrive folder on my computer which syncs to the cloud. Perhaps tomorrow I'm at a friend's house and want to show them my gummy bear idea but I don't have my computer and my phone's screen is too small for easy viewing. What I can do now is log into Simplenote and show them that way or just as easily do it with Skydrive. It may seem a little redundant to have both Simplenote and Skydrive to sync with, but I like to use two so if one fails the other can act as a backup.
I know, that was a lot to take in but using these services has made my life a little more organized and that's always a good thing. If you've got your own favorite web apps be sure to share them with us in the comments. Until next time dear readers!
