Website review by Patricia Monticello Kievlan, Common Sense Education | Updated July 2016

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Beyondpad

Busy interface obscures note-taking app's most productive features

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Learning rating

Flagged for privacy concerns

Community rating

Flagged for privacy concerns

Privacy rating

by Common Sense

Grades

9–12

Great for

Productivity, Creating Media

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3 images

Beyondpad is a tool for organizing notes and clippings from around the web.

Students might use the app as their go-to note-taking app, tagging their notes by class or by date.

The "trackers" feature lets users drill deeper into their own highly customized tagging system.

Pros: An extensive tagging system offers tons of options for sorting and organizing content.

Cons: There's a sprawling array of features, and it's daunting to figure out how they all work.

Bottom Line: A novel but unfinished idea for organizing notes that's tough to recommend given other easier-to-use, multi-platform options.

How Can I Teach with This Tool?
What Is It?

How Can I Teach with This Tool?

Beyondpad's tagging system might be too big a time investment for students to master, so it's likely a better fit for teachers looking for a tool to help them create to-do lists and organize their notes with tags. Jot down project ideas, memorable quotes, and reminders for upcoming events. Or use the timer tool as a countdown when students are completing an activity in class.

What Is It?

Beyondpad is a note-taking site with Chrome, Firefox, and Windows apps that lets users clip content (such as websites and images) and type notes. The notes can be tagged, color-coded, and sorted, and there are clock features for setting timers and countdown clocks. Some notes can be tagged in the "Trackables" folder, where users might store notes that track checklists for longer-term projects. Three other features -- Calendar, Insights, and Map -- are marked "Coming Soon," but there's no clear timeline when users might expect such an update. These features seem key to Beyondpad realizing its full potential as a "data-driven" note-taking tool.

Beyondpad is available as a browser add-on for Chrome and Firefox, and it's accessible from any browser. Users can create an account with their email address or use their Google, Facebook, or Twitter accounts to log in. The developer's website says that the app is "coming soon" to Google Play, and its source is available on GitHub.

Learning Rating

Overall Rating

Engagement

There are some neat features, but it's so hard to tell how they work that some users might not stick around to sort out the best ways to use them.

Pedagogy

There are tons of ways to customize how you organize your information. There's good potential for this organizational tool, though some may find its many features daunting.

Support

The demo account and "Tips & Tricks" notes include how-to information, but mangled sentences confuse, and disorganized information overwhelms. The tool hasn't been updated since August 2015.

Common Sense reviewer

Patricia Monticello Kievlan Foundation/nonprofit member

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