Using free web applications to manage research and lesson planning

27Aug08

I’ve been working on a post that describes how I utilize Evernote (an online note taking application) for the collection of resources to create lessons. Lifehacker recently posted a fantastic article that describes how Evernote can be used efficiently to manage a number of different tasks.

Over the last few weeks I have been evaluating how I manage my information, as I currently have stuff spread across a number of different services — which isn’t necessarily bad. I use Delicious to capture interesting and useful links to school related resources, and I’ve started using Remember the Milk to keep track of simple tasks, while my Google Calendar is still used for larger tasks that are date specific. I’m trying to figure out what my best solution is for tracking interesting news articles and the like that I might be able to use in a lesson one-day. I don’t necessarily want these in Delicious because they are fairly date sensitive. I’ve thought about using Google Notebook for this task, but wonder if staring and/or sharing and/or tagging them through my Google Reader is the better option? Too add more selection to this current pile there is also the previously mentioned Evernote which has a phenomenal search engine (it can search text in images) and the ability to tag and create folders.

I’m curious to find out how others are using the plethora of free web-services available today to manage their research and lesson planning. Are you sticking with one solution? or mixing it up to help keep different tasks in different boxes.

Update: Mashable has recently discussed a number of online tools for research.