10 Ideas for Using Evernote in Social Work Practice
Over the last week, I have been really in love with my Evernote account. Here are a list of ideas for you to use Evernote to it’s maximum potential:
1. Taking Staff Meeting notes. I jot down annoucements, change in policies, concerns, general psychoeducation, commentary from the group about a particular client and issue <- NO!
2. Audio Record Professional Presentations. If allowed, an audio recording would help you to reference important points that you may have missed while note taking.
The iPhone has a very good built in speaker to record audio
3. Make your notes more dynamic. Using the previous example, you can attach PDF handouts to the note (and recycle the paper), images, and even pictures from your phone (e.g. taking a picture of a doodle).
4. Create a notebook for your professional or personal blog. Put notes, web clips, random ideas, blog settings, etc. that will help you to keep track of your ideas and expand on what you want
5. Summarize scholarly/non-scholarly resources. Use the GoodReader application to highlighting scholarly (or non-scholarly) material, forward the PDF and highlighted text (summary) to your specialized Evernote account email to have an outline
6. Keep a constant flow of ideas. Using the web clipper, place interesting articles, blog posts, stories, psychoeducation, etc. that will aid your professional growth and development
7. Familiarize (or learn) an area that you are not familiar with. Keep a special notebook in an area of speciality (e.g. EMDR, Mindfulness, etc.) that you are not familiar with as you develop, learn and grow in this particular field. Bonus: Keep a note for questions or ethical concerns that you update as you consult with others.
8. Set Goals. In my folder for “Professional Development”, I have different notes for Personal Goals (e.g. write a letter to myself in five years), Professional Goals (e.g. learn mindfulness), and Blog Goals (e.g. increase number of blog posts). Using the check-box feature, you can place this before your goals, check it off when you accomplish it, and note the date. You can also make a note on goals you have given up changed direction on without having to delete them by using the strike-through feature.
9. Create Psychoeducation Handouts. Using one or several sources from articles you have clipped, you can create a note that has your ideas of the various points you might want to put on a handout. You can also attach clip-art or any other images that you might want you use before putting it in your word processor with your text. This is an example of a client handout created in part with help from Evernote.
Click Link To Go to Article
10. Store your different ways of thinking. While Evernote is text-oriented, one can upload mindmaps in a variety of forms (i.e. PNG, JPEG, or PDF) format from various apps. If you created a mind-map or other visual note on pen and paper, you can take a picture of your note and upload it to Evernote if you don’t own or have access to a scanner.
Some of my better thinking comes from pen and paper
Bonus: 11. Tweet an idea to your Evernote. If you have set-up myEN, you can send a direct message to “myEN” on twitter and have that show up in your Default Evernote.
I hope this has been helpful to you!
If you have other ideas, please comment below!
Posted on September 10, 2011, in Evernote, Featured, Intervention, Lists, Personal and Professional Development, Psychoeduction, Psychotherapy, Resources, School-Related, Social Work Practice, Social Work Tech Practice, Tech Tools, Tutorial / How-To and tagged clinical social work, creativity, evernote, evernote use, goals, how to, professional development, psychoeducation, twitter. Bookmark the permalink. 3 Comments.
Iggy, great post! I’ll chip one in. The last semester I used Evernote to store my Syllabi, student roster, class notes and all of the readings in .pdf which meant I could carry everything I needed around for my class on my iPad.
Another App I’m in love with that you can use to expand functionality is iAnnotate. If you download a .pdf from Evernote you can then open it in iAnnotate, which allows you to highlight, markup and annotate .pdf files. Great for the paperless classroom!
Keep up the great posts!
Great post. I was using ubernote, but it just doesn’t have the same functionality. Love how evernote is organized. What a great tool. Thanks for the tip about the twitter app myEn!
Pingback: Happy 2012 (And Fare-thee-well 2011) « Social Work Tech Blog