Best Note Taking Apps for Students

What is your favorite way of taking notes? Photo courtesy of Marco Arment. Licensed under CC BY-2.0.Last week, Lifehacker rounded up the five best note taking apps. As students, we are constantly taking notes, both in and out of the classroom. When did that emperor die again and who succeeded him? What's that equation? When am I supposed to be at that meeting? There is not an hour in the day when I'm not constantly taking down notes on all of the stuff I have to remember.

That's why Lifehacker is super awesome in providing this roundup of the best note taking apps. Some of them you will have clearly heard of before, and some of them might be new to you. For their full review, check out their article here.

Evernote

Duh. Come on. HackCollege freaking loves Evernote. Perhaps one of the most awesome things about Evernote is that you can get to it on just about any piece of technology you have. It has a webapp, desktop app for both Windows and iOS, mobile apps for iOs, Android, Blackberry, Windows Phone 7. I mean, there is no escaping Evernote. It's a great organizing tool to tag and collect notes, whether it's lecture notes or just a quick jot to remind you to do something. It also lets you capture pictures and save them too, which is really helpful for when you get an assignment sheet. Take a picture of it, save it with Evernote, and now you don't have to carry the sheet around with you wherever you go.

Shep would probably marry Evernote if he could. Here's his great review of the service for students. that was featured on Evernote's blog.

Springpad

According to Lifehacker, Springpad is the best at automatically guessing what you've just uploaded. After you've uploaded something from online, a picture, or a note, it organizes it into your folders without needing prompting from you. Now that is organizing. Just like Evernote, Springpad also has a webapp plus mobile apps for iOS and Android.

Microsoft OneNote

Functioning like a word processor, OneNote takes Word to the next level. It saves automatically, gives you much more freedom on the type of information you enter and where you put it, and also lets you create specific notebooks for different projects or classes for greater organization. You can download OneNote with MS Office for both your computer and with your phone. This option is definitely more expensive than free services like Evernote, but if you are gung-ho on MS applications, OneNote may work better for you.

Simplenote

Another free application (yay free!), Simplenote is an up and coming note taking service. It has a great developer community that keeps coming up with new add-ins to make the service more functional and easy to use. One of the most interesting features of this service is that it allows you to search through revision history for your notes. If you're looking for a fresh new way to take your notes, you should check out Simplenote.

Google Docs

Although this didn't make it onto Lifehacker's list, Shep and I have proved that Google Docs is a really awesome note taking tool. Google Docs is especially useful when you're in class with someone you know. Check out how to use Google Docs for collaborative note taking.

Paper

This revolutionary way of taking notes has been around since, well, okay it's been around for basically forever. As Lifehacker did their roundup, they found that a lot of people actually prefer to take notes with your basic pen and paper. In fact, in a follow up survey, 35% of people said that they use pen and paper, following just behind Evernote with 36% of people. I actually find this really interesting and wonder if this percentage stays true when the demographic is younger and in college.

Personally I am actually a big fan of handwriting notes, of certain kinds. My to do list is invariably in a little fat notebook that fits perfectly in my pencil pouch. I don't have to take out my phone or computer to just jot down something quick I need to remember to do or buy that day. For class notes, I take faster (and actually legible) notes on a computer, but for day to day notes, I prefer handwritten notes.

What is your preferred style of note taking? Have you tried any of the above applications? Let us know in the comments!

[via Lifehacker]