http://springnote.com

The basics

Springnote “combines the elements of wiki, word processing, and file organization into an easy, simple, and intuitive user experience. Users are able to write notes through a WYSIWYG editor along with templates and plug-ins that are continually being expanded for endless features and increased functionality. Also Springnote gives users a variety of access options from sharing, having collaborators, and creating a private or public notebook. You can organize all the information you need at your fingertips. Not only you can keep your pages private to yourself, but also you can create public pages where anyone can come to edit and view.”

Think of Springnote as a well-organised online writing and editing tool for any kind of task whether individual or collaborate, public or private. It has extensive useful features, including XHTML export.

Slides

Presenting the key affordances and possible uses of Springnote:

Video

Discussion and live demonstration of slides:

What is great

While underpinned by the same kind of technology that produces wikis, Springnote is an inspired cultural adaption of the wiki idea. By adding in visual cues (a feint-ruled notebook ‘look’ to the workspace and a marker showing where the cursor is positioned), Springnote has the best of the open-space wiki but without some of the ‘blankness’ that can inhibit users. Crucially, Springnote also has tight integration between online notes / writing / media embedding for private, group and public purposes. Nothing comes close to Springnote in offering users and experience that is like a traditional notebook and yet at the same time enhanced by digital networking.

Scenarios for using this tool

Shared space for teaching and learning

In a small postgraduate unit, involving primarily individual research, the unit controller uses Springnote to create and manage her curriculum which is largely constituted by instructions about how to conduct the research tasks. This notebook is shared, read-only, with the 5 students in the class. Students see what has changed, they can comment on the pages as well – for example, asking questions if something is not clear. Each student is also required to maintain a notebook of their own, organised as they see fit, which serves as a journal of their research process and progress. These notebooks are also shared with the unit controller who reviews them occasionally and makes comments; students are reminded that this is not a collaborative process but a review and occasional feedback; students use other communications tools for detailed discussion.

Springnote:

• has read and read/write control down to page level, enabling fixed and dynamic content to be mixed easily;
• does not have detailed conversational tools built in; and
• is adaptable to whatever writing genre is needed.

Maths online

A large unit in mathematics of over 200 students, being taught online, utilises Springnote, which supports LaTeX markup for equations, to enable students to write and share equations. Students are formed into learning sets of 10 students and each sets up a notebook for all 10 students to use. They are provided with a weekly problem set of real-world problems which have to be turned into mathematical equations so as to arrive at the answer to the problem. Students work together on the equations – using the text features to communicate with their colleagues about the problems they are having. When they have completed an equation satisfactorily, it is then shared with the tutor who provides a comment on it. The equation page contains both the equation and any discussion or notes the students need to provide to explain difficulties. Each week, all of the 20 groups’ completed pages are downloaded as xml files and published in a learning management system for all students to see.

Springnote:

• has great LaTeX support (one of the few that does;
• allows users to keep things private until ready to share; and
• exports, enabling material to be embedded elsewhere.

Integrating online work

A class of 30 students studying online marketing are set a collective group task for the whole semester to present a detailed report on current trends in the use of social media for marketing, brand management and so on. They utilise various tools (delicious, twitter and so on) to both gather information and discuss it outside of class. This project task is in additional to individual work they do, as well as discussions of specific trends and issues which for the focus of classroom activity. Classes are held fortnightly, with students instructed to spend at least 6 hours in the other weeks working on the project. Each student creates a private notebook which they use to draft ideas, take notes, track information. They all share access to a group notebook; this notebook is used as the task management site (with many inbuilt features from Springnote, such as a calendar, todo list), and also as the place where the final report is drafted. Students normally write their contributions in the personal notebook and then cut and paste (including formatting) directly into the group notebook. Other students then review and confirm the changes. Because Springnote has good page management features, a detailed page structure emerges. At the end of the semester, the students set up a blogsite and export their notebook to that blog.

Springnote:

• can replace classtime (as can all online tools for blended learning);
• is not free form – tree-like page hierarchies can be developed; and
• can take content to and from other web applications.

Alternatives

Notemesh is often suggested as a similar technology, aimed specifically at students wishing to share ideas and notes online. Helipad is similar. The apparent purpose of Spring note (note-taking) is in fact only a very small part of its functionality and power. Thus, the primary alternative to Springnote would be a wiki.

Further discussion and concepts

Namkyu Yang, a technical writer from Korea, explains more about Springnote (using, interestingly, Google Knol – another top 10 tool)

Purdue University has an excellent guide to using Springnote

Young Hoan Cho wt al. 2010. The role of tasks and epistemological beliefs in online peer questioning. Computers and Education, 56.1.