Internet Learning Opportunities – Evernote and Lynda.com

The term “mind boggling” comes to mind as I work my way through another “working vacation”. Yes, strange as it sounds, Nancy and I have been finding 4-6 days a year just to go to a beach somewhere. The compromise is that I work from @ 10:00 a.m to 5:00 p.m. on some project of potential long term benefit to our practice or our life.

Wednesday I was able to spend several hours updating my blog, Perspectives of a Small Town Lawyer, www.burtonhunteresq.blogspot.com , on some matters that have been bugging me, and to catch up on personal correspondence.

I tend to post to FaceBook when I am on the computer, to the extent that my
“Jiminy Cricket”, Ed Poor, cautioned me to back off a bit. I ignore him at my peril. Now Nancy advises this is “my time”; so ok Ed and Nancy, I won’t even proof this!

I was determined to become reasonably acquainted with a research tool called Evernote, and to compare it with Microsoft’s OneNote. They appear to be quite similar, but Evernote works across platforms, so I can access my notes and content via my laptop, desktop, iPad and iPhone. So, that’s the one I worked on.

I had located a wonderful resource, hundreds of course and thousands of “movies” at a site called www.Lynda.com. The introduction is a video of the actual Lynda explaining how she has set up a site with courses taught by knowledgeable people on an incredible array of software applications.

I got sucked in with the free offerings, but that is only about 10%. I ended up signing up for $37/month for the “premium” version. But, that includes access to the course materials, exhibits, and documents.

Yesterday I took a webinar on the iPad from a CLE publisher, paying $99, or three months of Lynda.com. I had to start and stop when the webinar was scheduled. The live feed had technical glitches, as did the speaker, who was a last minute replacement because the scheduled presenter was doing final argument in the Michael Jackson wrongful death trial. Bottom line, I will never again pay $100 to hear someone talk and show slides for an hour. That technology is outmoded before it really got started.

With the Lynda videos, I listen for 5-10 minutes. If I lose focus because I have gone to a site they referenced, or tried a feature of the program they were teaching, I just repeat that segment. I have already learned a great deal.

I also learned I need the “premium” version of Evernote in order to have enough space in “the cloud” and to access it from all my devices. That is $5/month. And, I had to make sure the newest Evernote is on each device.

So, why go to the trouble. My “take” is that if you want to stay organized, manage the information that is so readily available now, and increase productivity, you should go beyond the file structure of Windows or the surface features of the iProducts. Evernote is a tool to help me fight against my tendency to lose focus.

Some people are using the new Google Office products. Others do most of their organizing with DropBox. I see DropBox as something different and complimentary to Evernote. Don’t assume that I have mastered it yet. I have just scratched the surface, but I wanted to share what I have learned so far.

This post was written by Burton Hunter