For those students whose organization skills aren’t the greatest—most students I know probably fit the bill—two helpful websites, mynoteIT (www.mynoteIT.com) and  Notely (www.notely.net), offer “digital backpack” solutions. 

Using these free online tools, students can maintain a calendar of assignments, automatically remind themselves about upcoming due dates, take notes and share them with study group members, manage to-do lists and even keep a running tally of quiz grades.  And since this data is stored online, any student can access all of this from friends’ computers, too.

Managing course notes electronically has added benefits:  For example, instead of leafing through stacks of handwritten notebooks looking for everything your biology instructor said about a specific topic during an entire semester’s worth of lectures, you will be able to find these references instantly using an electronic keyword search.

For a unique group-oriented approach to notetaking, recruit a few friends and check out Notemesh (www.notemesh.com)—a free online tool for creating the ultimate class study group.  By uploading, combining, enhancing and editing each other’s individual class notes, students collaborate on a single set of master class notes that benefit all involved.