As with any good idea in the world…it is started by observing something that someone else has done. In this instace I blame Evernote Education Ambassador Nicholas Provenzano of The Nerdy Teacher. Specifically it was the post by Nicholas from November 19th 2012 titled: This is Why I Would Prefer Ideapaint Over an IWB in my Classroom.
If you have never heard of Evernote, where have you been the last few years? Evernote is a program that has a presence on the Internet, Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Blackberry, Windows Phone, WebOS, Chrome, FireFox and Safari that let’s you as their motto states “Remember Everything”. I use Evernote in a variety of ways but it was the blog post from Nicholas that inspired me to use it a different way.
I am currently a student at Bowling Green State University in the Master of Education in Classroom Technology and preparing for my final year in the program. My research project is going to examine the use of Evernote in an educational setting and also it’s use as a eportfolio system (I hope!). I had heard of Ideapaint prior to the post by Nicholas but it reminded me of it again. After checking my wallet and seeing I was a few dollars short to purchase the paint (plus my apartment lease prohibits me from painting) I had to move on to plan B and figure out how I could still make this a reality. We have a glass window seperating two areas at work and one day we started writing on it and then it all came together.
My coffee table at home has a glass top and until a few days ago was being used as a place to hold random items (aka the junk table). Organization, glass cleaner, paper towels and a set of dry erase markers later it had become my surface that I could use similar to Ideapaint. My wallet was only impacted $10 and my lease was still in tact…crisis adverted.
I am tying this into my project because I started using it to write down areas that I thought I may want to touch on in my research to make my project complete. I started writing away and when finished used my camera and took a picture. I found that the carpet under the coffee table did not provide a stable background and thus used some green construction paper I had used in a previous class to create a solid background. I have taken the pictures I took and put them into the Evernote notebook I created for my project. You can see my completed thoughts below. I plan to use this coffee table to jot down more ideas, notes, and other items in my day to day life.
