Schools that can't afford 1:1 could, for a fraction of the cost, supply students with (or have them purchase) Sky smartpens and then rely on Evernote for content sharing, collaboration, studying notes, etc.

What interests me, though, are the educational possibilities this syncing opens up. The Sky smartpen has been thoroughly reviewed and positively received around the general tech blogosphere. As the WiFi smartpen's name would suggest, this is all done over a wireless connection. The syncing is in near real time and synced notes retain all of the functionality of the paper versions.

None of these features are new what is new is that all of these notes, recordings and all, are automatically synced to an Evernote notebook.

Thus, a student could tap a graph he copied in class and hear what the instructor was explaining about the graph while he was copying it.

The last feature is pretty slick, but it becomes awesome when you realize that tapping anywhere within the notes plays the audio that was recorded while they were being taken.It simultaneously records sounds as you are taking notes, letting teachers create screencasts with audio simply by writing or drawing, letting students record lectures and discussions while they take notes, and even letting students explain their work verbally as they complete homework.

Like the smartpens from Livescribe before it, it digitizes all notes taken on proprietary Livescribe paper tablets.

Livescribe and evernote review