Zotero

Along the same lines as Evernote, Zotero is a web based application that works with Firefox only. Create an account at http://www.zotero.org/, download the application, and it installs itself to work with Firefox. What can you do with it? Here is the feature list directly from the website:

• Automatically capture citations
• Remotely back up and sync your library
• Store PDFs, images, and web pages
• Cite from within Word and OpenOffice
• Take rich-text notes in any language
• Wide variety of import/export options
• Free, open source, and extensible
• Collaborate with group libraries
• Organize with collections and tags
• Access your library from anywhere
• Automatically grab metadata for PDFs
• Use thousands of bibliographic styles
• Instantly search your PDFs and notes
• Advanced search and data mining tools
• Interface available in over 30 languages
• Recommendation engine and RSS feeds

The ability to export citations in APA format is a tremendous asset for student and faculty publications. For me, this one of the biggest distinguishing features and one that would make me more likely to recommend it to students.

I had previously put the USB version of Firefox on my flash drive, so I downloaded and installed Zotero on the drive as well. It works very well and you can synchronize the flash drive documents and citations with the web version.

While it works only with Firefox it is compatible with Windows, Mac and Linux platforms. Evernote has versions for both Windows and Macs and works with both IE and Firefox.

Both Evernote and Zotero would be excellent tools to create a repository for a Personal Learning Environment.

Evernote

David Rothman's recent posting "Screencast: Evernote as a Medical Student’s Peripheral Brain" at http://davidrothman.net/2009/03/02/screencast-evernote-as-a-medical-students-peripheral-brain/ prompted me to look more closely at this tool. Offered in both a free and fee based version, it is a personal notebook that you can fill with documents (pdf), video, audio and links. While Google notebook and Zoho notebook offer similar features, Evernote adds synchronization between computer and cloud storage as well as the ability to run the application from a flash drive.


There is also apps for both the iPhone and iTouch to get to public folders.


There are other healthcare professionals who have been using this application for a variety of tasks. The Efficient MD blog posted a 3 part series that suggested several uses for Evernote including how it could be used as a "hybrid electronic health record" The Efficient MD - Life Hacks for Healthcare How Doctors Can Use Evernote As A Professional Memory Accessible Anywhere (Part 1 of 3) (http://efficientmd.blogspot.com/2008/08/how-doctors-can-use-evernote-as.html).


I downloaded and installed the application, created a flash drive version and saved several sites during the day. From my home computer I logged into the application and everything I had worked on from a different computer was synchronized with my home desktop.

In previous posts about Personal Learning Envirionments I have used PageFlakes (http://www.pageflakes.com/) as an example application which could serve as a repository of information and links for a variety of sites. Evernote is a serious tool to add the collection.

Here are the differences between the free and fee ($45/year) versions: