Main Area and Open Discussion > General Software Discussion
Microsoft OneNote - some experiential Tips & Tricks
IainB:
I have been following an interesting discussion thread on OutlinerSoftware.com about the Best program for lecture notes, where I had suggested the importance of using pencil/pen and paper as the primary tool to take notes and to stimulate one's brain to make the most of the learning opportunity, and use a note-taking app (e.g., such as OneNote) as a purely secondary tool to capture any surrounding contextual info, including (say) an audio recording of the entire lecture, for subsequent review/revision.
On the page at: <http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/6475/15>
- there is more reference to "Analogue" (handwritten) versus Computer note-taking:
Posted by Hugh
Jun 9, 2016 at 01:27 PM
In support of the posts by Donovan and others above, I too recommend pencil and paper as a first resort. My reasoning is based on two things: my own experience using pencil and paper for note-taking and long-form first-drafting over more than 50 years, and recent neurological research supporting the use of those tools in preference to keyboards as a way of engaging deep levels of the brain.
Here’s a blog post by Joe Buhlig which contains references to some of that research: http://joebuhlig.com/the-science-and-experience-of-analog-writing/
The title of Joe’s first reference more or less says it all: “A Learning Secret: Don’t Take Notes with a Laptop - Scientific American”.
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The link to The Science and Experience of Analog Writing refers to the neurological research - which I had read about previously - confirming the relative and potentially crucial importance of making handwritten notes.
We should not overlook the distinct risk/possibility that, depending on one's peculiar make-up, relying on computer note-taking could potentially inhibit our ability to successfully learn.
Dormouse:
Cognitive processes underlying handwriting are quite different to typing and the 'muscle memory' is more about words than letters. Many people who have difficulties with writing have no such difficulty with typing. There's a number of ways handwriting would be expected to enhance memory & it also gives the option of larger/smaller, drawing relationships and organising points differently on a page.
What, so far as I know, has not been demonstrated is a similar advantage using a digital pen and a tablet - but many though not all) of the explanations underlying the effect would apply to that too. Where a lecture is made available digitally before it is actually given orally, it allows the possibility of comments being made by handwriting on the pdf.
Completely separately, my understanding of the possibilities of Onenote use was massively expanded when I came across this page. Amazing how much more power there is in having an example you can understand and are interested in. Still need to get my head around how to do it myself though.
IainB:
@Dormouse:
That digital DM OneNote Notebook at http://www.cryrid.com/dnd/?page_id=153 was pretty impressive.
I guess he's using a w-i-d-e display screen.
I got used to using OneNote on a 14.1" laptop display, and more recently a 15.6" laptop display. More real estate on a bigger screen would be nice, but I don't really want a bigger laptop nor a separate larger display screen.
My organisation and use of Notebooks is pretty minimalistic, so I am not into beautifully designed pages such as that digital DM Notebook seems to be.
After a period of experimentation, I learned to organise my notes using macros and templates as much as possible, and create notes usually using indented numbered or bulleted (collapsible) sections and subsections. As discussed in an earlier post, I also use table cells quite often as "containers" for text and images, since their boundaries are more "sticky" than the main containers on a Notebook page. Containers and images can be dragged and resized.
You can create and assemble/arrange several containers in a page, and overlay them and add drawings/shapes. They "float" as objects in layers over the page, but they do not retain any attachment or fixed relationship to each other, so that if you change one container, the page layout starts to get messed up. I think that's a limitation.
I work around it by taking a screenshot (OneNote clip) which gives you a single image of the assembled containers/objects - which latter can then be deleted and replaced by the single image in the clip. Any embedded text in that image is automatically OCR'd and becomes searchable and copyable, so nothing gets "lost".
If you select and copy a selection of formatted text and images, and paste the contents of the clipboard into (say) irfanview, the whole thing - formatted text and images - pastes as a single image. I sometimes post those single images to a DCF post as my notes. This can save a lot of time - no more messing about with the kludgy BB formatting codes in the DC Forum post editor - I just post the image (sometimes with the same clipboard contents posted as the actual, but unformatted plain text in a spoiler, so people can grab that text if/when they need it - e.g., for hyperlinks).
Hope that all makes sense.
Dormouse:
I have used the container idea since I read it here (thanks), and it all makes sense - but that's not quite the same as being able to do it myself. But does give me signposts and that digital book does give me a destination (I particularly liked the links to other books, each in their own subfolder). But feels like a lot of effort to get there as Onenote always has for me.
btw, I get more and more confused by attempts to compare Onenote and Evernote. What's here is wonderful but it doesn't impact on my Evernote usage at all.
It's clear that people use Onenote in many different ways, each developed for their individual purposes.
IainB:
* ...feels like a lot of effort to get there as Onenote always has for me...
* ...btw, I get more and more confused by attempts to compare Onenote and Evernote. What's here is wonderful but it doesn't impact on my Evernote usage at all.
* ...It's clear that people use Onenote in many different ways, each developed for their individual purposes.-Dormouse (June 13, 2016, 05:22 AM)
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1. Yes, I used to feel that way. The trick is to avoid assuming that you actually understand how best to use it and just approach it as though you are trying to use the thing "better" - e.g., I realised that if I dropped the old "data entry" habit and used the OneNote clipping tool and Windows Clipboard, then there were quicker ways to add/build useful content into one's notes, gathering text from elsewhere and even text inside images (e.g., an image of the "About" window of a program). Don't underestimate the automatic OCR capability of OneNote. It's a real timesaver, and the text in an image is very promptly indexed and thus easily found in searches. I started this discussion thread because, for me at any rate, using OneNote was not a simple affair and I figured that others might like to save time by learning from my experiences as I blundered along on my journey through the experiment.
2. I wouldn't recommend spending too much effort on comparing Onenote and Evernote - unless there was some practical purpose in it. I've used both and am familiar with their pros and cons, but I have at least been able to pragmatically determine which one has been able to best meet my peculiar needs in this so-called "information age". For example, see the long comment above in this thread on "OneNote as a 21st-century zettelkasten".
3. Yes, that's probably true, but some/most users (e.g., myself, my daughter) might typically be slow to find or appreciate some really nifty aspects of OneNote, because they don't have a common artificial framework of reference for how it could be used. "Too much to unlearn" maybe? They largely have to find out by trial-and-error, and my feeling is that a lot of people might not have the stamina to sustain that approach. Added to which, the OneNote developers are quietly beavering away in the background, making changes that are beneficial for users, so a seemingly kludgy feature found in OneNote today may be gone by tomorrow.
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