A Couple of Tools That Make It Easy to Track Tasks

Last night I answered an email from a reader named Melissa who had a question that I'm asked on a fairly regular basis so I thought that I would my response into a blog post. Her question was,

"I was wondering if you knew of any way for students to track and mark off their learning tasks as they go throughout the day. I just want a really easy to-do list that my kids can easily 'check off' as they go and see how much they have accomplished."

There were two options that immediately came to mind when I read Melissa's question. First, was StrikeApp. Strike App is a simple to-do list creation and management tool. To use Strike App just title your list of things to do and start typing your list. When you've completed a task just come back and strike it out by clicking on it, dragging it off the screen, or "x-ing" it out. You can share your to-do lists by sending people the link to your list. For those people who like to experiment with different backgrounds and themes, Strike App offers a handful of designs to choose from.

The second option that I recommended to Melissa was FetchNotes. Fetchnotes is a neat service for creating and keeping notes online. Fetchnotes uses an interface for creating and sharing notes that will feel familiar to Twitter users. When you write a note, just use a hashtag to label your note. Then whenever you want to search for a note just enter a hashtag. For example, if I was a student taking notes in a history course I might use the hashtag "#revolution" for all notes related to revolutions. Then I could go back and read all of my notes about revolution by just searching for that hashtag. When you want to share a note with someone in your contacts you can do so by just putting "@" before the person's name. Fetchnotes works on the web and offers Android and iOS apps.

Get 25GB of Box Storage with Fetchnotes

This service is no longer available.

I've written about the collaborative task management tool Fetchnotes a couple of times this year (click here for my latest review). This week Fetchnotes announced a great promotion with Box. Now if you register for a Fetchnotes account and a new Box account, you will receive 25GB of free Box space. Since Dropbox dropped support for sharing of folders (for new accounts), Box has become my preferred file hosting and sharing service.

Applications for Education
This summer I got a great Box use idea from Greg Kulowiec. Greg recommended creating a public, shared folder on Box that you fill with important digital hand-outs for your students. Whenever you update the folder your students will automatically be able to access the new files that you have added to the folder. Sign-up for Fetchnotes, try out the task management tools, then enjoy 25GB of Box storage to use in a public, shared folder for your students.

H/T to Make Use Of. 

Fetchnotes Makes It Easier to Share Task Management Duties

A couple of months ago I shared a new collaborative task management tool called Fetchnotes. Yesterday, Fetchnotes added a couple of helpful features. Fetchnotes already used hashtags like Twitter does for labeling and sorting notes. Now when you want to share a note with someone else in your group just add @ before that her name to have the task appear on your list and her's.

Fetchnotes has a Android app and now has a desktop client too. The Fetchnotes web version was recently updated too to make it more streamlined in appearance.

Applications for Education
Fetchnotes doesn't offer a lot of bells and whistles, but it is good for simple recording of notes. If I was a student taking notes in a history course I might use the hashtag "#revolution" for all notes related to revolutions. Then I could go back and read all of my notes about revolution by just searching for that hashtag. If I wanted to quickly share one of the notes with a classmate, I could just put his or her name after the @ symbol.

H/T to TechCrunch. 

Fetchnotes - Type, Text, and Tag Notes for Yourself

Fetchnotes is a new service for creating and keeping notes online. You can add notes to your Fetchnotes account by typing them on the web or by sending a text message to your Fetchnotes account. Organizing your notes is quite simple. When you write a note, just use a hashtag to label your note. Then whenever you want to search for a note just enter a hashtag. For example, if I was a student taking notes in a history course I might use the hashtag "#revolution" for all notes related to revolutions. Then I could go back and read all of my notes about revolution by just searching for that hashtag.

Applications for Education
Fetchnotes doesn't offer a lot of bells and whistles, but it is good for simple recording of notes. The service is still in beta. One of the features they're promising for the future is group notes which could be quite handy for classroom use. You could have all of your students contribute to a set of group notes by using the same hashtag when they write notes.