Recently, and for no particular reason, I was thinking about the apps I use across platforms. And I wondered to myself, if someone asked me what one app I’d keep if I had to get rid of all of my apps, which one would it be? The answer came to me so quickly, I stopped to think about whether or not I was being hasty. I wasn’t.

Evernote was one of the first apps I used, and I started using it before the iPhone was even a blip on my techy radar. I first encountered Evernote when I bought a Wacom Graphire back in 2007 (I still use it when I animate or photo edit, and it still works amazingly. For the record) when I was still a PC user. I loved that I could take handwritten notes right in the program and they’d be saved there forever later. That was something I utilized with my students — taking notes organically — a balance between what I wanted to get across to them and the ideas that grew organically from our conversations.

When I made the switch to Mac, I was disappointed that the handwritten note feature wasn’t part of the program. But that didn’t keep me from keeping absolutely everything else there.  It’s become the storage place for all of the notes from all of my graduate classes, as well as the place where I put all of my lesson plans and student artifacts (this was a move I made recently because of my iPad).

I’ve been made fun of in class because I take pictures of the board, then annotate those pictures (might I add how I love that the Skitch annotation markers are part of the Evernote program now). I’m totally okay with that. Besides, my classmates often asked for copies of my pictures after class (so ha!).

And Evernote means that my hoarding doesn’t take up ridiculous amounts of space in my house. I ponied up and bought a scanner when my old printer died and now even handouts make their way into Evernote. I cannot sing its praises more than I have, I don’t think.

So Evernote, thank you for being awesome, and thank you for helping me organize my digital life.

As an aside, I really wanted to find a way to keep Evernote, Noteshelf, and Dropbox, as those are the three apps I use more than any other.