Springnote: a virtual, collaborative notebook

Springnote is a virtual notebook you can explore for personal use or as a collaboration tool.

The technology (or what are my powers?)

Signing into Springnote gives you access to a multi-functional dashboard as shown below.

When you create a notebook you have versatile sharing options:

• Completely private
• Share select pages with invitee(s) via email
• Share the whole notebook  with invitee(s) via email
• Publish select pages (and all subpages)
• Publish an entire notebook

When you share with selected users, you can designate these individuals as collaborators with write and read privileges, or as readers with read-only privileges.

When you add a page, you have a variety of editable template options. You can also create your own pages from scratch. Once you’ve started to add content, you can easily edit your notebook in edit view, accessing any of the many edit options. (The image below is not to scale and I’ve pulled out some of the feature lists for easy viewing.)

You also can convert preexisting files to Springnote pages through the import feature, allowing you to link to a variety of document types. Finally, you can bookmark selected pages that you return to time and time again.

You can readily toggle from edit mode to view mode to see how your notebook will appear to other users. In view mode, your notebook is a nicely formatted Web page.

Instructional strategies

Learners can  use Springnote to take notes and can update their notes later with multimedia. Social learning is built into Springnote because learners can:

• Share with study groups
• Add public notebooks of interest to a Watch List
• Comment on public and shared notebooks
• Export notebook pages to personal blogs

As an instructor, you can essentially use Springnote as an easy wiki creation tool, taking advantage of the multimedia elements illustrated above (e.g., images, videos, and slide presentations) and template features that include:

• Orientation tools (e.g., templates for group member profiles)
• Discussion templates
• Project management tools

Springnote’s also useful as a  mobile learning (mlearning) tool but only if you’re an iPhone or an iPod touch user.

For more information about Springnote, take the tour or check out some public samples.