Stu.dicio.us - Social Notetaking for Students

Tuesday August 8th 2006, 1:10 am

Written by: Brian Benzinger

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student, notes, organization

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If you are a student, take a look at Stu.dicio.us, a new service designed for students that helps with organization and notetaking. Claimed to be a social notetaking service, Stu.dicio.us allows students to publicly save organized notes, manage a class schedule, and keep up to date with tasks using a time sensitive to do list.

I’ve seen products built specifically for students, but nothing quite like Stu.dicio.us. It’s simple, dead simple. As of now, students can organize themselves using a class schedule tool, note manager, and a to do list in an Ajax based interface with barely any clutter to be found. Students can also search other member notes, making Stu.dicio.us a social notetaking service. But what has me excited for the service are the features to come September 1st. Stu.dicio.us says to expect a grade manager to record test and quiz grades, a 1gb file manager to save documents and school related material, and Wikipedia integration for class notes. It is also said that they will be making the service more social with the adding of “friends” and a voting system for public notes. Makes me wish I didn’t graduate from college already so I can really put Stu.dicio.us to the test!

The schedule tool allows you to add classes to your account with basic information including class name, teacher, and the dates and times that you have the class. Once you have atleast one class added to your schedule, you can start adding to your todo list and notes manager for that class. The “Todos” area is a very basic to do list allowing you to add time specific tasks for things like project deadlines and the notes manager has, in my opinion, a very well done notetaking editor.

The Stu.dicio.us notetaking editor is one of the best notetaking tools I’ve used online. Too often I signup to notetaking services only to find a big textarea or WYSIWYG editor that makes taking notes unorganized. Stu.dicio.us is different. It doesn’t have many features like some notetaking tools out there, but it’s very fast, easy to use, and organized. You can even write a complete page of notes without ever taking your hands away from the keyboard. When taking notes for school, I learned to take fast notes writing structured lists on a subject and drilling deeper in each item of the list when needed, like an outline for an essay. Stu.dicio.us uses the same approach by allowing users save their notes in an outline type format along with any text formatting when needed (including Textile support). Notes are saved as the student types and when complete the note can be searched and downloaded as an HTML or Word Document.

One thing that bugged me with the site though was content. As far as I know, two people are involved in the development of Stu.dicio.us (Winton Welsh and Meredith Toher) and not much else can be learned by visiting the website. This is one problem that Sam Davyson picked up that I have to agree with. When first visiting Stu.dicio.us, I had no idea what the service was about (except for the hint in the name) or how the service could be of benefit to me. I couldn’t even find method of contact. My advice is that if you want to be taking seriously as an educational product, provide atleast an about section, maybe some legal print being its a social service sharing student notes, and a method of contact.

Overall, I like the direction of Stu.dicio.us and feel that it has great potential. It is clear that Stu.dicio.us knows what students want and the simplicity in the service makes it a joy to use. The hard part, I imagine, would be to get the service out to the not so “geeky” students ;-).

(Via eHub)

30 Comments

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# 1. JOJOFACE on Aug 08, 2006 at 2:48 am

How does it line up to http://www.mynoteit.com/ ? I’m interested in your take on that. ^_^

# 2. Josh Pigford on Aug 08, 2006 at 9:32 am

Make the weird domain names stop!!! Ahhhh!!!!

Seriously though, why do companies do this? It’s next to impossible for people to remember where all the periods go.

# 3. Dennis on Aug 08, 2006 at 9:51 am

Cool find Brian. I could see my daughter using this as she is starting junior high this year.

# 4. Brian Benzinger on Aug 08, 2006 at 10:12 am

Jojoface -

Thanks for mentioning mynoteIT. I had forgotten about the service and was trying to find it when I was working on the post. So, here are my thoughts on mynoteIT.

I feel that it has great features that any student would need, but they just aren’t presented all that well. To me, an overview page is extremely important and it should be the first page I see. An overview page would need to show me recent activity and how I am doing in school. mynoteIT has a homepage, but it doesn’t really tell you much. I would like to see a list of upcoming assignments, passed assignments, and easy access to all classes without leaving the main page (maybe in the form of a drop-down list). Also, if you are in a group, it would be nice to see some information about it as well.

I also feel the interface is a little confusing/cluttered and feel more intimidated signing into it then I do Stu.dicio.us, but that could just be me.

One thing though about your bringing up mynoteIT is it made me realized how many features it has. I was unaware of its grade tracker and user groups. I’ll be taking a better look at it tonight.

If Stu.dicio.us gets through their feature list which they have planned for release in September, the two services would be very comparable in terms of usefulness to a student. As of now, mynoteIT has Stud.icio.us beat, but a month from now, my opinion may change.

# 5. Brian Benzinger on Aug 08, 2006 at 10:16 am

Josh - Haha, tell me about it! I had to double check my spelling of the name every time I typed it. It’s getting to the point of typing del.icio.us now though where I don’t even have to think about it ;-). But yeah, you’re right. Companies using names such as this are starting to drive us all insane, haha.

Dennis - Good to hear. I find Stu.dicio.us to be one of the simplest systems I’ve used for notetaking and with the new features coming, it seems like a keeper to me. Hope it works out well. Let me know!

# 6. Winton Welsh on Aug 08, 2006 at 12:02 pm

Thank you for your comments about our service. We have a lot planned for the future, so I hope you all will stick around.

Right now we are technically in beta, so much apologies for the lack of introduction. I invite you all to read more about our plans at http://blog.dicio.us/articles/2006/08/06/stu-dicio-us-fall-re-launch

As always we want to hear your opinions, please e-mail us at contact@stu.dicio.us .

# 7. Alex on Aug 09, 2006 at 4:09 pm

I would recommend you review www.mynoteIT.com like JOJOFACE said, mynoteIT blows stu.dicio.us away. Its got hundreds of more features, a GREAT WYSIWYG editor and tons more. Maybe even to a comparison article so students can decide which is more benificial to them.

# 8. adam on Aug 09, 2006 at 6:32 pm

i really like where studicious is going, but it doesn’t work on safari :( so its a no for me

# 9. Student Organization Guy on Sep 02, 2006 at 3:16 am

I don’t see the value in making it a social application. Just build a solid app. that is actually useful to people and then leave it alone. Innovating a new market that should not exist in the first place is not innovating at all.

I agree with the comments on the name. So they have been deceived by two Web 2.0 lies. Use a funky dot-dot-dot name and add social networking to anything.

# 10. Cathy on Sep 27, 2007 at 8:53 pm

I can’t see how to get started using stu.dicio.us! There is no indication on the main page, once I am logged, in as to what to do next! I like the sound of your review and can see a place for this with my students. Am I so dumb or is this not user-friendly? Please advise…I believe we should be using web.2 tools where they serve a sound purpose and this has huge potential.

# 11. Josh on Feb 14, 2008 at 12:44 am

That website seems to be down. i did come across a different cool college note taking website: http://www.sharenotes.com. Right now they are giving away 10 free 16 gig ipod touch .I signed up in less then a minute and have already uploaded most of my old notes/exams, hopefully i get one of those ipods!