EVERNOTE AND ACTIVE-COLLABORATIVE METHODOLOGIES. A CASE STUDY IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Mobile devices have revolutionized the campus because of its low cost and technical capabilities, which together with a wide spread of Internet services has caused a change in the behaviour of students. This reality that teachers perceive every day has transformed the way in which students interact with their environment. Thus a change occurs in the nature of higher education, leading to an emerging concept of teaching and learning based on student mobility "m-learning".
Although slideshows and YouTube video views are usual in class, Information and Communication Technologies -ICT's- have started a revolution in university education. “From anywhere, on any device at any time...”, this is the trend in the current model of education on-line, also called "e-learning". The advance of Internet and some Web2.0 tools such as chat or instant messaging have shortened distances, optimizing resources and time. The use of these educational resources allows increase the student motivation factor, while improving the abilities, skills and competences acquired by the student.

Evernote is a cloud application used to organize information through a virtual notebook with a wide range of functionalities. Among its options emphasizes that it allows sharing information with different users and synchronizing annotations from any type of electronic device: a computer, tablet or smartphone (iOS and Android). The notes that can develop go beyond the typical text notes, since they can be generated from a web, voice recordings "audio notes", email or photographs that have been made through the mobile phone. To use this tool for free is only necessary to access the web http://www.evernote.com and create an account. A characteristic that is very interesting for its application in the teaching is that the various notebooks can be shared with other users simply through their email addresses. So the notes are stored in this notebook, are visible to all selected users; thus it is possible to interchange comments, share files, lists and resources, thereby allowing collaborative work among a diverse group of students.

Educational innovation project shown in this paper is economically efficient, sustainable and transferable to other subjects and knowledge disciplines, because the means for their implementation are widely used within the educational community. The use of an app based on free and open software has enabled a fast implementation of experience, since most of the students are accustomed to using these applications.