Over the weekend I received an email from a reader who was looking for an alternative to Evernote that she could use to take notes during parent-teacher conferences. I’ve had a lot of questions along the same lines since Evernote changed their plans to essentially make their free plan almost worthless. In this case the teacher seeking an alternative to Evernote wasn’t looking for a bookmarking tool. She was looking for a note-taking tool. One of my suggestions was to take a look at OneNote. My other suggestion was to try Simplenote.

Simplenote is a free service for taking notes on just about any device. You can use it in your web browser, on an Android device, on a Kindle Fire, and on an iOS device. Simplenote also offers free desktop apps for Mac, Windows, and Linux.

Simplenote’s formatting automatically organizes your notes into sections. You can create and apply tags to all of your notes. The tags help you organize and search your notes. Individual notes can be shared via email. Sharing notes lets you collaborate with other Simplenote users. Simplenotes has a playback option which shows you changes to your individual notes over time.

Applications for Education
Simplenote is worth a look if you or your students are looking for a simple, straight-forward notes tool that works on almost every device. The simple nature of it lets students focus on taking notes without being distracted by other features. The default structure of notes could also help students organize notes across multiple subject areas.