Why My Children and I Share Our Unschooling Evernote Notebooks

When I signed up for Evernote so did my children. Yes, we all have our own accounts. This allows us to share our notebooks. Why would we want to do that? That’s what I’m going to talk about today!

Whenever I create a new weekly homeschool records notebook, I invite my daughters Sophie and Gemma-Rose to share it. I give them the ability to not only view the notes but to edit them as well. And my girls do the same, sharing some of their notebooks with me.

Here are a few reasons why we choose to share our Evernote notebooks:

The girls have access to all the links in my notebooks. For example, whenever we watch an online video, I clip the link into my records book. If the girls want to watch it again, they can access my notebook and follow the link.

I constantly add extra information on things we’ve been discussing to my notebooks. I might say, “You know how we were discussing wind farms? I found a great article that covers all the things we were talking about. I clipped it into this week’s notebook if you want to take a look.”

Sharing notebooks means my girls can add their own learning experiences to my notebooks. I can’t keep up with Sophie’s learning. I used to say, “What did you do today? I need to add some notes to the records book.” Now I ask her to add her own notes to my books which is a more efficient way of doing things. Sophie clips Youtube video links, photography and other articles, screenshots of her online coding course, blog posts, screenshots of her blog design work, photos, books, podcasts etc. into the appropriate weekly notebook.

My girls can add information into the records book for my interest. The other day, Sophie watched a Youtube video on the latest Mercenne prime number. I couldn’t remember what differentiates a Mercenne prime from an ordinary one, so I asked Sophie if she could find a definition online and clip it into the notebook for me. (She enjoyed reading the article too.)

My girls can share their own personal notebooks with me which helps with the record keeping. Sophie spends a lot of time researching photography online. She reads articles, watches Youtube videos, and recently she’s even started listening to podcasts. She has an Evernote notebook where she collects links to everything she has discovered. She keeps this notebook for her own interest, but I asked her if she’d share it with me for record keeping purposes. The notebook shows up in my side-bar amongst my own notebooks.

Sophie also shares her book notebook with me. She is keeping records of all the novels she reads for her own interest, but I can also use the notebook for record keeping.

I could ask Sophie to add everything directly into my record keeping notebooks (see point 3 above) but there are loads of links and other info. She’d flood my weekly notebooks with her photography discoveries. Sharing her whole photography notebook seems an easier way of doing things.

I have a Premium Evernote account, but my girls only have free ones. Well, that’s not quite true. Sophie had a free account until a few days ago. Then on Monday she said, “Mum, I’ve reached my upload limit for the month. I’ll have to stop adding things to my notebooks until next month.” And I replied, “You can’t put learning on hold until then. I’ll upgrade your account.” So that’s what I did. Sophie now has a Plus account.

It might seem rather inconvenient that I now have to pay for Sophie’s Evernote account, but I look at it this way: She must be learning a lot. All those notes and links, photos and articles… I think she’s giving herself a wonderful education!So these are a few reasons why my girls and I share our Evernote notebooks. If you have any more ideas about sharing notebooks, please share!