brymerr921 in (e-mail address removed)
shared these words of wisdom:
I have a Palm TX and I am wanting to use it with the keyboard to
take
notes in my classes, rather than bring my laptop. I'd save the
notes
I take in class as a MS Word file, but I was wondering if it is
possible to import my Word notes into OneNote to organize, edit,
etc.
I. There are several ways of importing Word docs in ON:
1.) One can print the document into ON.
The result is an *image *.
It looks just as if the document would have been printed on paper.
As ON automatically runs character recognition in the background and
the resulting words are automatically indexed, material printed into
ON is searchable.
As this way the ON page an image is shown on the ON page, it is not
editable.
One can make annotations however.
But as to my experience (if at all) this makes sense only using a pen
on a TabletPC.
2.) A different approach would be to just import the content of the
Word doc into ON with Copy+Paste.
Contrary to text pasted into ON from other applications text from Word
keeps most of the formatting (font, font-size etc. but not justified
or centred).
The Text is fully editable and one can use all of ON's additional
feature.
II. For what you have in mind the second method seems to be the proper
way.
You could just take rough notes during the class and then do all of
the editing, formatting etc. in ON without the need to edit things in
Word first.
III. This said, let me add that from my experience from many long
years of academic teaching I doubt that you might benefit too much
from taking notes during the class this way.
1.) With a Palm you would be working with a tiny little screen. Even
with good eyes it will not to easy to follow on screen what your
typing.
It's difficult enough with a notebook already.
This iPAQ user knows that a PDA is nice instrument ;-) But not for
typing with a keyboard. None of the people I know who use PDAs work
with a keyboard (better say : anymore; some did initially but none who
would not given that up meanwhile).
2.) Typing with a keyboard during a lecturer is highly distracting.
It absorbs too much of concentration.
Human beings are capable of multi-tasking only to a certain extent.
As our campus has been fully covered by WLAN access-points for quite
some years now, many of our students are carrying notebooks around.
There are vary few, however, who are using them for taking notes
during lectures.
This simply because it has turned out that even those who are
"professional" typists (working "blind" with the 10-finger system) are
far less productive with typing than with the traditional pen/pencil
and paper way.
The situation is not much different from taking notes for producing
the minutes of a meeting.
When it became fashionable to carry notebooks around some colleagues
began taking notes with a notebook. No one who would still do this
today.
3.) Things are different - to a certain extent <!!> - with using a
TabletPC with a pen.
IV. I do not all want to discourage you. The above is just meant as
food for thought.
Even with my background as the first person in the whole university
who carried around a portable computer (will celebrate the 20th
anniversary in a few months <bg>) I'm more than only sceptical that a
student working the way you have in mind would gain more that he/she
would loose.
One may benefit far more when concentrating on the lecture, taking
short notes on paper (in one one's shorthand) and later elaborating
what one has written down.
Rainald
