Over the course of the last few years, I have acquired several sample textbooks. Some of these books are ones that I requested and seriously considered, but others were either just sent to me or given to me by another teacher. I don’t use textbooks in my classroom because of the nature of the software I am teaching. Like software, most software textbooks are outdated before they reach the classroom.

This summer, I decided that I was going to outline every chapter each textbook in Evernote. By outlining the books in Evernote, I am able to quickly and easily search for information in the future. I have a sub-notebook called “Textbook Outlines” and I tag each chapter with the appropriate tags. I have included a sample image of my “Textbook Outlines” folder. Once the school year starts and I start writing lesson plans, I will post how useful this idea was or was not. If anyone out there has any better ideas for keeping track of the information in textbook samples, I’d be more than glad to hear about it.