College ruled 2.0: Google Notebook
November 18, 2008
When will Google quit? They seem to want to invent everything that hasn’t been invented yet and reinvent everything that’s already been invented. One recent contribution is Google Notebook, which, as you might guess, is an online note-taking site.
The main advantage to using Google Notebook might not even be considered an advantage by some teachers: it gives the students the ability to share and comment on each others’ notes. Maybe Google Notebook could integrate with PayPal so that bright, unscrupulous students can more easily sell their notes? Horrors. But personally, I’d bet that a bright, scrupulous teacher could get great results by using this tool with an entire class or with more than one class studying the same subject. (Overseas collaborations, anyone?) Even if students don’t share them, however, web-based notes will still be conveniently accessible from any computer or smart phone, as well as searchable.
Google Notebook will work best for Firefox users who are willing to install and use add-ons (also called “extensions”), because the Google Notebook Firefox add-on makes it very easy to “clip” pieces of text from websites: all you have to do is highlight the text and right-click to save it. This functionality is duplicated by the Zotero Firefox add-on, however, which unlike Google Notebook can also handle images and generate a properly formatted bibliography.
Google isn’t the only one to have invented an online note-taking site: plenty of other non-behemoths have had the same idea. If you’ve used one or more of the note-taking services below, why not throw us a comment? We’d love to hear what you think.
-AMANDA FRENCH
Related Stuff:
Teach your students how to take notes that work
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- Tags: firefox, Google, collaboration, notes
By the way, I wrote up a 