Over my years teaching in a writing workshop, I have developed scads of forms and charts in an attempt to track my conversations with students during reading and writing conferences. Binders. Whole-class charts. Individual student charts. You name it, I have spent hours in Excel creating it.

And, every year, by the spring, I have ditched it, relying on my memory and my students’ memory of what we discussed last time.

That sounds irresponsible, I know. And it probably is. While I appreciate putting the onus on my students for remembering where we left off, I should probably be 100% sure of that, too. So, I am spending some time this summer re-thinking the way I gather data on student reading and writing performance.

I’ve toyed with the idea of tracking conferences in Google Docs. Last year, Allison used Confer, which has some strengths and weaknesses. Right now, I am thinking of jumping on the Evernote bandwagon.

Here are some of the interesting things I am reading:

Using Evernote to Confer with Students from Two Writing Teachers

Student Conferences with Evernote and KustomNote from Miss Spink on Tech

Organize your @evernote account with @kustomnote from Purely Paperless

Conferring Tool #2: Evernote from The Together Group (This post talks about importing rubrics into Evernote for conferring and tagging individual students’ strengths and weaknesses!)

Conferring with Kustom Note from Ms. Pana Says

Do you have a favorite digital tool for managing conferences?  Brilliant tips for using Evernote that I should hear about? Leave a comment below or find us on Twitter @RebekahODell1 and @Allisonmarchett.