One Note v. Journal

[Lyn Sweetapple]

I am testing for our school a HP Compaq 2710 tablet. I think it will be very
useful for teachers when hooked to a projector. However, I am also trying out
VISTA Business. We have Office 2007 and One Note. What are the difference and
advantages between One Note and Journal? I need the simplest possible for my
teachers to use.

Also we often use SMARTBoards. The teachers like being able to draw on a
stopped video image or on a web page. How do I invoke the pen for IE or
Windows Media Player?

 

[Erik Sojka (MVP)]

Journal is essentially a bare bones proof-of-concept utility, while OneNote
if a fully supported product, with a full team of developers and other
folks who work on the product. It's kind of like Wordpad vs. Microsoft
Office Word. OneNote has more features and better integration with other
applications.

As fas as your specific question about classroom usage:

The big difference between Journal and OneNote is that Journal only works
on one document/page at a time, and the pages must be individually created
and saved like any other document. OneNote lets you create a data
hierarchy of Notebooks, sections, and pages, and automatically saves and
organizes your data. If other teachers and students also have computers
connected to a network (Tablet PCs or otherwise) you can create Shared
Notebooks which can be automatically synced to/from other computers. A
teacher can project a OneNote page on a screen, write on it during a
lecture, and the lecture notes can then be immediately available to the
students on their computers.


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[John Guin]

And just in case you want to try both OneNote and the journal and decide to
go with OneNote, I posted a powertoy to migrate from the journal to OneNote
on my blog.
http://blogs.msdn.com/johnguin/archive/2007/12/21/journal-to-onenote-importer.aspx

Thanks Lin!

 

[boblarson]

I also have to chime in a little -

Two of the cool features of OneNote that I like is that

1. You can record audio and/or video while you are taking notes and you can
go back to any place in the notes and click and the audio, or video, will
start to play what was happening right at the time you were taking those
notes.

2. OneNote can deal with handwritten notes and you do not need to convert
them for you to search them. So you can have handwritten notes and yet still
search for notes you may have taken that way without having to convert all of
your notes to text. That feature alone just blew me away.
--
Bob Larson
Access World Forums Super Moderator
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Tutorials at http://www.btabdevelopment.com
If my post was helpful to you, please rate the post.
__________________________________

 

[John Guin]

And for Bob Larson's item 1 - syncing written notes to audio recordings,
another powertoy at
http://blogs.msdn.com/johnguin/archive/2007/12/12/media-fine-tuner-powertoy-for-onenote.aspx lets you fine tune to a millisecond how they align.

(Coudn't resist plugging the powertoy! )

 

[Josh Einstein]

One difference is that OneNote has a future and Journal does not. There was
not a single change to Journal (with the exception of them somehow mixing up
the icons for copy/paste on the toolbar) in Vista and I wouldn't expect to
see any ever again. Journal is the notepad.exe of Tablet PC's.

 

[Lyn Sweetapple]

Thank you. The comparison between wordpad and word is an excellent analogy. I
am glad to know about the support. The worst thing is to train teachers and
then find the software is gone just as they get used to it. Then they think
all training is a waste of their time.

 

[CMoya]

Thank you. The comparison between wordpad and word is an excellent
analogy. I
am glad to know about the support. The worst thing is to train teachers
and
then find the software is gone just as they get used to it. Then they
think
all training is a waste of their time.
--

Still, MS could do a whole lot better with integrating these disparate and
redundant tools... it leads to a lot of confusion and less-than-great user
experience. Most users just give up and never really use the tools to their
fullest because of confusion. Examples of this: Outlook Contacts vs. Vista
Contacts folder. Outlook Notes vs Vista Notes Sidebar (they're not
integrated tho they should be) vs OneNote itself (which in essense is a
replacement for Outlook Notes).