Springnotes

Wiki in Education

Hello, My name is HyunSoo Lim who is a developer in Springnote. Today, I want to share my story about visiting Hanne elementary school.

On April, I went to IlSan with my co-workers to visit Hanne elementary school where is famous for using Springnote and educates students in English as a model school. When the school was appointed to a model school at first, teachers in the school explored options to help students while discussing how to educate them in learning English and finally, chose Springnote as a tool. In 2008, Hanne elementary school started a program that involved in nine hundred students writing diaries and wordplays in English. The way this system works is that once students write diaries in English teachers correct their grammar and leave comments on Springnote. At the end of 2008, after successfully practicing the English teaching program the school published a book called ‘English Diary in wiki.’ based on the content on Springnote. I got a copy of the book (^__^) as shown below.

At the beginning of 2009, teachers in Hanne Elementary School asked the Springnote team to use Springnote better for interacting with students. In the past, nine hundred students and their teachers used one personal notebook. So, the teacher who owned the notebook had a hard time to approve students' requests and in some cases, students tried to write on a page simultaneously so they had to see the notice "The page is locked" or NICKNAME is writing. Please wait." This was an issue.

So, our team decided to have a one-day workshop for the existing teachers and newly appointed teachers about how to use Springnote from beginning to advance. About 30 teachers came to the workshop. There were two groups: teachers who are already familiar with Springnote and teachers who don’t know Springnote. So, we explained the basic features and moved to advanced functions including page permission and managing notebooks.

At the workshop, we suggested the teachers a new guideline called “How to create a collaborative notebook in a class” This new guideline eliminates a burden for teachers to approve students’ requests and solves the page locking issue when students try to edit a page at the same time. The following notebooks are in action.

Unfortunately, we couldn't have a time to talk about Springnote in general with students because they already left school by the time when we finished the workshop. But, I am very glad to see teachers who are not familiar with computers use Springnote and their environment. (I am telling you that the computer environment was not the best, IE 6 on CRT monitors T__T) By helping teachers, now I know and understand how beginners look for features and use them and where they make mistakes. I truly felt that as a developer I have to consider more about less equipped computer/network environment and have a lot of work to do making Springnote better for beginners.

Upgrade your Springnote for iPhone/iPod touch!

Springnote 1.5.1 for iPhone and iPod touch has been released!!

We are thrilled to relase this major upgrade from Springnote 1.3. With this update you can download recent pages to local for reading them when you are offline and see the last page you read when re-opening the app which means that Springnote is operating smarter than ever. In addition, we improved our icon system for indicating current-page status so that by just looking at icons you will know your page status immediately.

Springnote 1.5.1 is free and can be downloaded through App store.

Meet Springnote for iPhone

We pride ourselves in making Springnote the best combo of note taking and wikis. With the release of Springnote for iPhone, note taking with Springnote has just been made better.

When you talk about note taking, it's often done in a notebook. Springnote so far has been a browser-based application, not leaving much room for many of the portable devices.

Now comes Springnote for iPhone. It's as simple as this: "take notes in iPhone/iPod touch and access it on Springnote" and "read all your Springnote pages on iPhone".

Below is the list of iSpringnote features, that will completely transform your iPhone experience:

Access your Springnote account from anywhere with your iPhone or iPod touch
Support Markdown syntax to maintain formatting through a PC and/or iPhone
Create new pages while on the go
Read existing pages on your iPhone
Attach mobile photos from your iPhone to a Springnote page
View page file attachments
View pages in its original hierarchical structure through a tree-style menu
View recent updates and view pages in the order they were updated
Read pages viewed by the iPhone offline by having page information stored to your iPhone’s local memory (page caching).
Smart searching allows you to search for pages easily through keywords
View pages in portrait or landscape mode by rotating your iPhone 90 degrees

Springnote for iPhone is free and can be downloaded through App Store. Download Springnote and simply change your iPhone life :)

Screenshots:

How Wikis can boost your education

Few days ago, we came across this cool article and decided to respond with few words on the importance of technology to learning and education.

Springnote has already witnessed many benefits that it has offred to many educational organizations and success as well. Here's the comment we left on the article. Of course, we're getting ready to write more on the power of wikis in education and go even deeper into the Hannae Elementary School case explained later in this blog!

Till then, have a great weekend, everyone!

Hi, Sara!
Thanks for the great post. I really enjoyed it. Gave a whole new scope of the Tech-learning area.

Just to add few cents to what you were saying, I work for a wiki service named Springnote (http://springnote.com/en). It's being used by many academic institutions in Korea, from elementary schools all the way up to graduate level research institutions, and it's truly creating a new form of academic collaboration in a postive way, which never existed before.

For example, at this one elementary school, every student is required to use Springnote for all their academic activities. What happens is they actually do all their homework within the wiki. Lots of assignments are group projects; but after school, students can't really get together because they all go home. So in the evening, they get together online, communicating through IM and finishing their homework in Springnote. That night, teachers grade assignments and leave comments in Springnote. The conversation about the assignments gets carried over to the next day when they actually get "physically" together in classrooms and talk throughout the day. And the same cycle repeats.

While much of this process includes a new form of "virtual" collaboration, I think it's just better suited for the growing digital generation, that are increasingly spending more time online and are just simply getting more accustomed to processing their thoughts that way. Of course, a wiki like Springnote can be useful across all learning settings, be it college or even corporate.

I've shared my thoughts more in the following:

http://blog.springnote.com/pages/1718876

http://blog.springnote.com/pages/1635676

and this is the actual wiki page of the elementary school example I mentioned above. (Sorry its content is in Korean but many students learn to write their journals/diaries in English)

http://han1.springnote.com

Wikis on the Rise in Asia

Springnote is based in Korea. It has multi-language offerings in Korean, English, and Japanese. (We're planning to expand the language set in the near future!)

A question that naturally follows is this: "Why Asia? Do you think you can ever invade the invincible U.S. market while based in Korea? Stop dreaming!" Well, let me walk you through one step at a time to show what's really going on.

(click here for a larger view of the chart)

As a starter, needs for wikis are soaring higher than ever. If you study the search trend on Google, as shown in the charge above, there are far more queries for the word "wiki" than "blog ", i.e. Internet users are willing to learn more about wikis than blogs.

However, what's even more surprising is that most of those queries are indeed coming from many Asian and pan-Pacifc countries, such as Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong, and Australia. That means 1) we've got an astonishingly fast growing market in wikis, and 2) the market belongs to Asia. That seems to be a great business opportunity right there, doesn't it?

For example, Springnote, the sole online wiki service in Asia, gathers many users from around the world through its English and Japanese service offerings. A great number of them indeed come from China, Singapore, Japan, and Australia, in addition to many from the U.S., U.K., Germany and Canada (We spotted an Swedish team today!) Openmaru, the maker behind Springnote, is located in Seoul, Korea, garnering a huge opportunity to explore the market here just by being local, i.e. Asian. While it's a service aiming for global presence, it's been so lucky to enjoy a success in Asia that could not easily come with many companies from the West .

The Web 2.0 revolution didn't stop in the Silicon Valley. It's spreading throughout the entire globe. Do you want to be global or local? It's a very important question any business development people should be asking themselves every single day. After all, the Internet increasingly blurring the boundaries bewteen countries, or even continents. :)

(I covered this topic on my personal blog TechnoKimchi more in depth.)

Meet the Whole New Springnote!!!

As we mentioned before, we've been working really hard to make Springnote a better service for you. Our efforts mostly revolved around providing better view, collaboration, content management, and communications. And we've come to bear a great fruit in the whole new Springnote, which offers amazing upgrades, including:

1. View Mode

You can now view your Springnote pages in a gorgeous style in View Mode. As a picture is worth a thousand words, what used to look like the second (edit mode) will now like the first (view mode)!

2. Multiple Notebooks

You can create as many notebooks as you want. If you remember that each notebook comes with 2GB of file storage, you know this means an unlimited amount of online file storage for you! :)

3. Two Types of Notebooks

Personal Notebooks, mostly for personal note-taking, and Group Notebooks, mostly for collaborative projects and working creating content together. Moreover, joining or inviting to a Group Notebook has never been easier.

4. Dashboard

a place where you can see all your notebooks and recent updates.

5. Communication Channels

You can not only exchanges messages with other Springnote members through Inbox, but also leave comments on each page.

6. Integrated Search

The amount of content in Springnote has shown a sigifnicant growth in the last few months, leading to a need for a stronger search function. And we have it.

Of course, we have far more features implemented. You can check out what's been changed here at the forum.

Our team has been testing the new Springnote for a little while and we fell in love with the upgrades ourselves! Make sure to check out the new version right now!

Still new to Springnote? Come and join us!

Upgrade Your Note Taking Skills with Springnote

As you can see from the chart above, note taking turns into a hot topic every August-September. We're assuming it's probably because it's the back-to-school time and you know, note taking is a crucial part of learning process. In fact, note taking has been the very spring of creative ideas and works throughout humanity; or at least, that's the marketing slogan of Moleskine, right? ;)

How do you take notes? Pen-and-Paper is probably still the best way for the majority of people. Love for iPhone is adding lots of digital flavor to note taking as well.

But for a brief moment, let's think about bringing that online. Are your notes just yours? Don't you sometimes want to share and work on them together with your friends? What happens you take notes on one device and want to access and modify it from everywhere? We all know synching isn't necessarily the most convenient way to do so.

So why not start online from scratch? Here are some of the benefits of doing so:

you can access your notes from everywhere as long as you're connected to the Internet and we're hearing the word "ubiquitous" more than ever,
you can share your notes with others as you co-develop your ideas and projects,
you can brag what you know online and search engines will automatically connect knowledge-seekers to your expert pages,
your ideas can no longer be contained in text and image formats only; they often need to be expressed in sound and video formats, the "digital" formats,
typing is always faster than handwriting, and
you don't need erasers as you can simply modify your notes and even go back to the older versions as you wish.

These are what Springnote offers you. Learning is becoming more digital and social and we need right tools for accomodating such changes in the education environment.

So again, we strongly urge you guys to consider Springnote as your note taking utility as well as a learning tool. Wont' regret it. :)

Springnote Gaining Recognition!

Today, Springnote was introduced as one of the best notetaking applications by Mashable. And this marks the 5th introduction of Springnote by a major Web/IT media.

So, we sat down and pondered over what brings this kind of "recognition" to Springnote. Is it the features? Is it the design? Is it the 2 GB of free file storage? If not, what is it?

For one, we are sure that we have a set of features that are very well geared towards the "ease of use." Springnote does indeed need more work on some areas (which we ARE working on), but from the very get-go, we've been working hard to make sure Springnote is easy for everyone.

Another one is that we have been able to combine the best of online notebooks and wikis. It's good for both personal purposes, like keeping up your journals, creating idea banks, or manging to-do lists, and collaborative purposes, like finishing group projects or managing meeting logs real time.

And Springnote is only getting better. "Springnote v.2" is coming out soon. Who wants to be the first witness? :)

Springnote: Pathway to Happy College Life

A new school year is getting real close. While I'm pretty sure you're well-stuck with all the fun Olympics games, I feel compelled to remind you that it's time for you to get ready for the new school year (or even the new school!)

And in that context, I've been pondering time after time how an online solution like Springnote can be such a great help for students, esp. those in college whose life could be extremely stressful, even miserable when not properly managed. But hey, trust me, college years must be remembered and even cherished as the best years of your life; I'm telling you this from my own personal experience :)

So, here's how Springnote can help you get most out of your college days (it's cross-posted on the Springnote homepage.) Also, don't forget that, as mentioned in the last post, we're working on many things to make Springnote even better for you!

Springnote for College

Pathway to Happy College Life

Because Springnote is your best friend in the world when you want to:

1. Organize your life

College life is all about "managing what you got." That includes your time, relationships, look, health/weight, money, and everything else you can think of. Spirngnote is the best tool that can help you get organized. Want to manage your schedule and to-do-lists? Keep track of exams and assignments? Plan for the precious spring break? Or monitor your weight progress against Freshman 15? Springnote has all the right features and templates to help you get everything under control.

2. Find the right content

Looking for great content for your research papers? Sick of going to libraries only to find outdated data? Or just want to kill your time in the pool of really entertaining fan pages? Springnote is there for you to create, share, and find content. With hundreds of thousands of pages already created, Springnote will bring what you're looking for to the table.

3. Manage your ideas

Springnote is essentially your notebook born again online. You can create any many "idea" pages as you want, attach files, and invite your friends to work on them together. With search, tagging, and categorization, you can effectively manage all your otherwise cluttered notes.

4. Boost up your popularity

We're living in the era of self-marketing. How much attention you get from others often determines what you're worth. Unfortunately, your fame from before college doesn't necessarily translate into college. Boast what you know and build your brand on Springnote. People will find you, contact you, and aspire to meet you.

5. Get group projects done

Don't tell me you still email each other back and forth for your group projects. Who polishes up the final version of the project? Are you still using IM for sharing files? Springnote is a collaborative space, i.e. wiki, that lets you co-work on assignments. Oh, don't forget that Sprignote gives each user 2GB of file storage FOR FREE!

Just in case you've been waiting

Hi, everyone!

It's been relatively silent on this blog for quite a while, right? Well, we haven't just been "silent"; it's been a very busy time for us last couple of months as we're making many changes to Springnote.

Springnote has been increasingly gaining popularity from those around the world. In response to all your love, we're expanding what we always thought to be Springnote to something of a much bigger scope and definition! Once we launch the next version, it'll still be a notebook, but a much more powerful one. We are very excited that the new Springnote will make many of you "really happy" as it's been so for us the Springnote team.

What are they? At this moment, the new version is being developed in a relatively "stealth" mode. Why? Because we love surprises; but, in the next few weeks or so, we'll definitely make you the first one to know the changes and even to try them out!

We always thank you for all your support and love. Springnote will always be around and always get better. That's a promise :)