Bookmarking and information storage for teachers

Discovering the brand new world of English Teachers on various Internet platforms made me extremely happy circa 7 months ago. I got inspired almost every day. But them came the trouble: how to save and not to forget all of those useful pieces of advice and experience of other teachers I dug up all over the Internet? Being an organization-freak as I am I took this task very seriously. After half a year I have something to say about that. Here are couple of ways you can keep your ideas and notes organized. Each one is evaluated on the basis of its merits and drawbacks.

DRAGGO

This was the first website I started using to collect Internet links. It is a web-based  bookmark manager. You need to register and start organizing your links in tabs and folders.

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• It is free and easy to use.
• You can download a "Save to Draggo" button on your browser window and save pages in one click.
• You can share tabs and categories with other people. For example, this is my tab on teaching resources.
• You can organise your links in tabs and categories and vary their size and location.
• You can add descriptions to you links

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• The button doesn't always work.
• There is only web version.

I still use it but not often as I find this kind of organization to be a bit stiff.  As a rule I want not only to bookmark a website but to save a blog post or just take two sentences from a page and Draggo is not the right tool for that.

FEEDLY

I found Feedly when I started looking for a simple reader. It has a clean and user-friendly interface as well as an option of categorizing the content. As in any reader the article disappears once you read it, but they introduced couple of options in case you want to return to them later.

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• Feedly has a tag system, you can create a tag and assign it to the article after you read it. You can access all of you tags on the bottom of the
• You can also save content for later reading and use it as a storage for articles you want to read in more details and make notes about
• They have web and mobile version.
• You can integrate your feedly with other services like Evernote, Pocket, Readability etc

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• I don't use tags in feedly that often, mostly because it saves only articles from your feed

Richard Byrne made a comprehensive video about using feedly for organizing your stuff.

POCKET
Then I started looking for a tool that can save content of different kind from different sources and I found Pocket!

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• By far the biggest advantage of this service is that you can use it offline. It means accessing saved articles at any time and place.
• You can get a pocket button in your browser and save in one click.
• You can use tag system to categorize your content.
• They have web and mobile version.

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• You can't underline or highlight information 

EVERNOTE
Evernote is a digital notebook with many many many functions. I started using Evernote last winter but hasn't explored it fully until late spring. Now I use it for both personal and professional purposes and find it extremely diverse and useful

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•  Evernote clipper allows you to save pages from your browser.
• When you work with Internet pages you can highlight important parts
• It has a desktop, mobile and Internet version
• You can save Internet pages, text and pictures
• There is a multilevel storage system. You can make notes, organize them in notebooks
• There is also tags system
• There is a handwriting function which I haven't explored yet
• You can share your notes and notebooks with selected users
• It continues to grow and the developers offer something new almost every month

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• I wish you could read Internet content offline. Then Evernote would be PERFECT!
• Also it is quite a bulky programme and takes ime to start on my computer

PINTEREST
I was avoiding Pinterst for quite a long time thinking it is another overhyped service. Once I started using it about two months ago I found out it's a great tool to collect visual data and maybe not the best for articles, blog posts and such. I say 'maybe' because I have really used it to collect pictures of classroom decorations, recipes and clothes.

you can clearly see the priority here ;)

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• there is a key word search system and you can search the whole website for the necessary content
• you can organise your links in folders
• there is a pretty thumbnail to every link
• Pinterest button can be applied to both pictures and the whole pages

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• the linking system is quite bulky, in my opinion. For some reason, it takes a long time to move from the pinterest site to the target page.

WRITTEN NOTEBOOK

I still keep a notebook which I started about 4 years ago. I wrote down activity ideas and lesson plans I found in the Internet or books long before I was using any of the services mentioned above. I also write down my notes during lectures and seminars I attended and books I've read. So now it's turned into quite an old and flimsy folio which I cherish.

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• you can take it anywhere and use it instantly
• the battery will not run down
• you're unlikely to lose this information
• you can glue papers in (for example handouts from seminars and lectures)
• you remember better what you wrote

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• it could be difficult to find necessary information
• once written, you can really change information or move it to another place

Some other ways you can store information but I haven't made a good use of them (yet).
Personal blog
When I started my blog, I made "Links" page right away. I put there some of the blogs I follow, some useful websites with esl material and stuff like that. I guess, it was dome more for the visitors of my blog not for me, so it just re

Twitter
After I revived my Twitter and turned it into a professional development network thingy, I rethought my way of posting, retweeting and favourting things. I feel that one can develop a special system here, but I have not done it yet.


I'd be interested to know if you use these services differently or you have a completely new way to store information.