DinosARs Among Us

Just opposite a pair of velociraptors in the Jurupa Mountain Discovery Center grounds there sits a weathered stone monument dedicated to Ruth and Sam Kirby, who long ago had a vision to use this land to help others explore and learn about the natural history of the region.  Their spirit lives on in the Center’s mission statement: “JMDC’s strength comes from the individual’s desire to learn.” You’ll encounter that spirit in the enthusiasm of the Museum of Discovery docents who describe features of their exhibit that make you wonder if they’re pulling your leg, just a little*.  You’ll see evidence of it in the variety of Eagle Scout projects that dot the landscape. And you’ll come across it throughout the grounds, where among representations of dinosaurs that are more artistic than realistic(some of them Eagle Scout projects themselves), you will find signs prompting you to interact with JMDC’s Augmented Reality Dinosaur Hunt. The staff is learning themselves, experimenting with new technologies to reach out and connect with today’s youth.

At designated signs, the boys and I would scan a QR code and then wave our phone across the ground, making T-Rexs and Ankylosaurs appear among the cacti. At 100% size, the Diplodocus wouldn’t fit in our phone screen. The Dimetrodon’s sail fin moved gracefully in the breeze. Each “discovered” dinosaur was accompanied by a byte of information, read to us by a synthesized voice — another foray into the world of tech. It was a neat experience, and the AR dinosaurs are more realistically rendered than the sculptures. 

However, other explorers of the center seemed to prefer to remain grounded in reality.  This is natural history, after all.  An examination of the world around us.  Even if someone in the area were to make fantastical claims about the size of the beasts that had once roamed this land, most attendees seem to prefer to see it for themselves, not conjure it onto a mobile screen. 

The patrons’ lack of adoption of Augmented Reality as a learning tool in this environment may be an example of the disconnect between learning objective and activity. At JMDC, the goal of the AR activity was to find dinosaurs. My boys, who continually grabbed my phone from me to scan the next dinosaur, only did so for the novelty of the scavenger hunt, not for any real learning. They preferred to spend time in the center where they could examine fossilized poop or marvel at the size of the brachiosaurus sculpture.

This does not mean that AR is not a relevant training tool.  I believe the JMDC could still use this technology to activate learning throughout their centers.  How? Change the reason why the attendee would activate the tool in the first place.

In the Museum of Discoveries there is a replica of a fossilized Deinosuchus Hatcheri head. The docent described the size of the beast as the width of the museum, which gave us some perspective.  But place a QR code by the skull, and allow the fossil to come alive as the crocodile is built, head to tail, across the museum floor.  Now we can get a sense of how massive the beast really is — length, width, and height! Take it a step further by reminding us that the fossil is of a juvenile alligator — place a larger, adult-sized visual next to it. Exciting!

My boys tarried by the fossilized poop. QR code here? Why not? The Discovery Center of Santa Ana has a scale replica of a brontosaurus and beneath its tail: a mound of excrement that would make Dr. Sattler pause for consideration if it weren’t fabricated. JMDC doesn’t have space to recreate that, but they could set a QR code by the poop and show us which animal most likely made it.

This changes the purpose of AR. No longer a game of hide-and-seek, it becomes an activity that connects the real world (existing knowledge) with visual aids (new knowledge).

The presence of Augmented Reality in the Jurupa Mountain Discovery Center excited the ID geek in me, and I think they’re onto something with this experiment. However, AR’s disconnection with reality makes it little more than a novelty and unfortunately, something unlikely to be explored further. An effort to connect the digital models to a real object could truly make history come alive. I hope it happens.

A Scout project for my boys, perhaps.

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*A fact or two may stick with you on your way home, so you check the internet when you get back and find out that they were true.

Good news for President Obama, Jon Stewart, and you!

source: holykay.alltop.com

One of the lessons I learned early on was to remove all the speech fillers from my presentations. You know: those “ums” and “uhs” that pop up as we work to recall that perfect word.

We may need to rethink that standard. Here’s a study that suggests that – ah – such pauses can improve listener recall.

“This is speculation, but if the speaker doesn’t know what they’re saying very well, you pay attention more because you think you need to work harder to get it. One thing that disfluencies do is buy speakers more time. They are a signal to the person listening that I need more time.”  – Duane Watson, Cognitive Science group

I wanted to give this a test, see how it sounds.

• Soundbite 1 – (That sounds good!)
• Soundbite 2 – (OK, I can see how that could help focus the listener’s attention.)
• Soundbite 3 – (Too much! Lack of credibility.)

So if you’re worried about your public speaking skills, this is good news. It’s permission to relax a bit. Yes, you’ll need to rehearse your presentations multiple times before you deliver them – your confidence in your knowledge of the subject matter builds needed credibility. But once you’re in front of your listeners, don’t focus on every word you’re saying. Don’t get flustered when you do insert a speech filler here or there.  Allow yourself to speak naturally, to let the “ums” fall where they may.

What’s That Behind You?

Just what DO they put in those botanical shampoos?

In last night’s “Facilitating Over the Web” session, the discussion migrated to best use of webcams. While I was extolling the virtues of using webcams, someone in the chat box piped up: “I’d have to clean up the disaster area that’s behind me first.” Which was a very astute observation. I had taken a few moments to clean up my office space a little before the webinar began.  It’s likely the first time in months that my desk has had that much open space.

Even after a little tidying up, it’s valuable to check your background to make sure that what your learners see doesn’t distract from you, and your message. The image to the left, of course, is an example that’s easily fixed. Move the vase, or move yourself.

But what if your entire background is distracting, and something that you cannot move? And what if you don’t have the option of going elsewhere? How can you ensure that the webinar you’re facilitating remains professional, and your learners stay on task?

These folks came up with a solution:

It’s pretty basic, and reminiscent of those pop-up car screen shades. But they do a remarkable job of blocking out the background, allowing you to facilitate from wherever you may have placed your home office: the kitchen, a corner of your garage, wherever you’ve got a desk and a chair.

The WebAround comes in three colours, and frankly, I’m eyeing the green one, wondering if I can treat it as a “green screen” for my eLearning video recordings.

If you find yourself facilitating webinars, but are concerned about the professional image you’ll project if folks can see the space behind your smiling face, this product may be a decent investment.

Sharpening the Saw: Google Hangouts

This “Sharpening the Saw” post comes on the heels of a conversation I’d had at the end of the Total Trainer: Distance Learning session I had facilitated back in May. I’d encouraged the participants of that class to practice designing webinars, and provided two free resources in which to do so:

• AnyMeeting
• Google Hangouts

I’d spoken of AnyMeeting previously in this blog. I used that resource a few times. I’d dabbled with Google Hangouts, but their interface had changed enough at the time of the seminar that I didn’t want to do more than mention it.

I knew I’d have to go back and try it out.

I’ve since started another side project (more on that later, as it develops) where I’ve had the opportunity to use Google Hangouts as our meeting center. I don’t believe it’s suitable as a fully-fledged virtual training resource, but it can be a remarkably facile tool for seminars, brainstorming, or other basic meetings.

Google Hangouts Main Interface

You May Already Have It

If you’ve got a Google account, and you’ve poked around a bit in Google +, you’ve already got access to Google Hangouts.

For my web meetings, I was able to create a Google Hangout invitation using my Google Calendar. I found a link in the calendar invitation form that says: “Add video call.” I clicked that, and the Google Hangout was created for the time I stipulated in the Calendar entry. The link to the Hangout was sent to all invitees via email. All they had to do was click that link and presto! they were in the meeting.

Google presumes that you are “hanging out” to collaborate with other humans, so it doesn’t default to a whiteboard or a PowerPoint presentation. Instead, the one window that is available for presenting information starts out with you as your webcam fires up and your computer microphone goes live (Hangouts uses VOIP for its audio communication).

This isn’t to say you can’t share anything other than your smiling face. Google Hangouts offers plenty of tools to help you say what you have to say.

Hangout Tools

(The first two buttons on the apps toolbar pictured to the left will expand the toolbar to include text, and invite additional participants, respectively.)

Chat

Chat is fairly ubiquitous in webinar software. I mention it to ensure you’re aware it’s included in Hangouts.

One thing to note: where other webinar software provides dropdown fields to help you specify who is to receive your chat, Google Hangouts assumes that you’re there to talk to everyone else who’s there. Want to chat to a specific participant? There are some commands for that. Type “/?” in the chat box to find out what those are.

Screenshare

Screenshare allows you to share any window that you have open on your computer.

In the apps toolbar, click the green monitor with the white arrow to display thumbnails of the windows you’ve got open on your computer. Select the image of the screen you want to share with your participants, and your webcam video will be replaced by that content.

In my meetings, the team either saw my smiling face or a different window I’d opened in preparation for the event. I shared a site I’d set up for the team, some documents that we needed to review, and typed up notes from a brainstorming session.

Capture

Photos taken by “capture” are shared with everyone on the call.  If you don’t want to display video, but aren’t sharing a screen or a document, I guess this is the feature you’d use.

Slideshare

This is an app I loaded into my Google Hangouts that allows me to search for presentations on Slideshare and share them in my Hangout. In the image above, I’ve shared an old ASTD-OC Slideshare deck about Mentoring.

That slide looks pretty small in this post’s first image. I was able to expand it to “full screen” mode, making it easier for participants to read.

Google Drive

Connecting with your Google Drive (formerly Google Docs) account, you can share documents that you have stored in the Google cloud.  You can use the Google Drive app to also create Shared Notes, or a Shared Sketchpad.

I was excited about this feature — I had wanted my first brainstorming session to allow all participants to contribute to the document I had displayed on the screen. It didn’t work as planned; each time I loaded the document I got an error message and a prompt to try again. After reloading the document enough times, I finally resorted to sharing the document via Screenshare, and typing in whatever the team said.

Google Effects

This resource gives you the opportunity to be a bit silly. If you’re sharing with family, you can “place” a “tiara” on your head or “glasses” over your eyes. A fun way to let off some steam.

Apps

I mentioned that I loaded a Slideshare App to my Google Hangout. There are others to try as well, including a “digital whiteboard with sticky notes,” which could be useful for group brainstorming, drawing and doodling tools, and more.

What’s Not There

Audio Bridge

As I mentioned earlier, Google Hangouts uses VOIP for the audio component of the meeting. You’re limited to your system’s microphone and speakers. I’ve got a decent USB headset, so I’m prepared for this.  And you can operate just fine on your laptop’s default microphone and speakers. But what about your learners?  You’ll need to determine before your session if everyone has the proper technology to participate in your Hangout. Otherwise, you may need a resource that allows for communicating over the phone.

Feedback prompts

WebEx Training Center allows the learner to respond to basic yes/no questions via icon, raise his hand, and even share their status via emoticon. AnyMeeting also has a mood indicator, which allows for the raising of hands. Google Hangouts relies solely on chat or voice for communication.

Polling

I’ve come to appreciate the power of polls in my web training sessions, and the lack of polling in Hangouts likely means that if I need to use a free resource for training, I’ll stick with AnyMeeting.

Unlimited participants

Google Hangouts is limited to 10 video call participants. OK, that’s a HUGE obstacle. However, Google also offers “Hangouts On Air,” which also allows for up to 10 video participants, but can be seen by as many people that have the link. Hangouts on Air has the added benefit of publishing your Hangout automatically to your YouTube account to share with whomever you so choose.

Final Thought

Frankly, I’d like to try a Hangout on Air.  That said, Google Hangouts won’t be my go-to freeware if I’m planning to facilitate a virtual training session.  But if I’m preparing a collaborative meeting, or one that applies more informal learning skills for small groups, Google Hangouts is more apt to be my free web meeting resource.

Word Scramble Activity

A while ago, I got a Balloon Time Newsletter* that shared a few things you can do with balloons, besides blow them up and make them into balloon animals. Their featured activity, “Word Scramble,” may have potential as a team building activity.  I’ll let you decide:

Needed Supplies:

1. 30 or 50 balloons
2. Ribbon
3. Helium
4. Felt-tipped marker

How To Play:

1. Select a word or phrase related to the occasion.
2. If you select a word: inflate one balloon per letter of the word.
   If you select a phrase: inflate one balloon per word of the phrase.
3. Attach a ribbon to each balloon. The balloons will be free-hanging, so be sure to make the ribbon long enough that the participants can reach them.
4. Use a felt-tipped marker to write one letter (or one word) of the selected phrase on each balloon. Scatter them around the room.
5. Have the participants work together to unscramble the word or phrase and put the balloons in the correct order.

Variations:

• The game can also be played with teams by inflating one balloon per letter (or word) multiplied by the number of teams.
• You can play this game outdoors, providing you attach weights to the ribbons tied to the balloons.

How can this be used as a team-building activity?

• The phrase (or word) can be a message central to the meeting. A motivational saying, perhaps, or a core value you’re emphasizing.
• You can structure the teams to include organizational roles, or personality types, etc.   How they solve the puzzle may be based upon those roles.

Yes, this activity itself is a variation of many message-assembly activities.  The balloons add an energy to the activity, especially as participants search through a room of moving balloons.

*I’d attribute this activity to balloontimenews.com, but the site appears not to be active any more. You can check out balloontime.com for some additional party activities.

Practice facilitating webinars – for free

In a week, I’ll be facilitating an ASTD-Orange County Total Trainer session on distance learning. It will be my second time doing so; the last time I actually conducted the session virtually. This time I’ll be standing up in the front of the classroom.

The focus of the session is on how to design for distance learning. My premise is that one should design a web course no differently than one would design a course to be facilitated in a physical classroom. Yes, there’s the problem that the tool you’re using may be limited to a computer screen. But that shouldn’t limit how you engage your participants.

When it comes to Total Trainer, or any course that teaches others to facilitate over the web, there’s a problem of application. The two webinar powerhouses, Adobe Connect and WebEx, aren’t free.*

Enter AnyMeeting.

The name aptly indicates that the tools available in the program are geared towards meetings rather than training. For practice, and for the “real world,” AnyMeeting still creates an opportunity for experiential application of hosting webinars.

AnyMeeting tools

Chat Chat is the staple of web meeting participation, and anyone who is familiar with Instant Messaging (or even texting) should find chat to be a comfortable method of engagement in a virtual meeting. AnyMeeting allows you to hide and resume chat throughout your webinar. It also allows for private chatting, which can be a handy tool for 1:1 discussions between participants.
Polling Polling allows you to ask a question and get responses from everyone. It’s a great tool for quickly measuring what the learner knows, and engages everyone (not just the eager “hand-raiser”). In AnyMeeting, polling is done one question at a time. Questions are automatically stored in a bank, so you’re able to create your polling questions in advance. Note: always create your polling questions in advance. It’s handy to be able to create questions on an as-needed basis, but nobody wants to wait for you to type your question and answers. Fire your ad-hoc questions verbally, plan your polling engagements.
Mood  The name’s deceptive. “Mood” is a facile way to quickly understand where your participants are. Want people to ask questions? “Mood” has a “Raise Hand” prompt.  Get the sense that they don’t quite grasp a point you’ve just made? Ask a yes/no question, and tell them to respond using a mood option. Participants clear their mood by selecting “I’m Fine.”
Share PowerPoint   Yup. You can share your PowerPoint files. AnyMeeting also allows you to share PDF files, and your desktop. Share YouTube It can be effective to include short videos in your webinars, so being able to share YouTube videos is helpful.
Camera A frequent concern about web-facilitated meetings is that there’s no connection with the instructor. This is especially true if the camera’s turned off. Go back to that adage about how people understand what we say. How much from tone? How much from the words we choose? How much from body language? The camera allows the web facilitator to use that crucial method of communication (body language) in delivering content to the participants. In AnyMeeting, an active web camera will dominate the screen until something else is shared, which I think is a nice touch. Note: I may not leave my camera on ALL the time. For videos and demonstrations/simulations, I turn the thing off. Too many moving pictures. For introductions, conclusions, and active discussion with participants, my webcam is on.

There you have it: if you’re a budding trainer who wants to get some experience facilitating webinars, AnyMeeting is a great tool for you.

 

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* True, WebEx does offer a free trial. as does Adobe. So if you’re going to try designing on those platforms, be quick!

Sharpening the Saw: Notes in the Cloud Addendum

A few posts back I discussed using OneNote as a document curation and note-taking tool. The features I described were primarily associated with the work I do for CCi, on the computer. But what note-taking tool do I use when I’m away from my desk – in meetings, or struck suddenly with inspiration?

OneNote does have a mobile application. I’ve tried using it on my iPad, but ran across some difficulties. The program works well when you sync your existing notebooks through Microsoft’s Skydrive*. My challenge: IT won’t let us do that.

So: with OneNote Mobile effectively rendered useless, what other mobile-ready note-taking resources exist?

SpringPad

Back when I was reveling in the novelty of using an iPad, I was reading about apps that were trying to improve on the functionality of the iPad Notepad. The Notepad is a pretty good tool, and I was making decent use of it, but the idea of “notes in the cloud” appealed to me. I elected to attend a conference armed with an app called SpringPad.

SpringPad provides several templates for their cloud-based notes.

SpringPad allows me to create robust notes that can include audio recordings and pictures to enhance my recall. I’m able to organize these notes into separate notebooks. This was my first foray into the cloud, so I was intrigued that all the stuff I captured while out and about would be synced to a SpringPad app in my Google Chrome browser, making it easier to retain and review those thoughts at a later date. Additionally, I would be able to share my notes with anyone who also had SpringPad. And since I was going to a conference that many of my co-workers were interested in, well, that made sense to me. Let them see my notes.

SpringPad uses templates to support your note-taking efforts. In other words, you don’t necessarily start with a blank page and fiddle with it to create what you need. Looking at the image on the right, you can see that it allows you to create a note or paste a link. Below that are options for creating a checklist, a task, or an event. You can create notes for books, music, and movies. Select one of these latter options, and you’ll be linked to databases that connect you to readily-available information about that media. In other words, if I want to record a fascinating insight gleaned from “Road-Tested Activities,” I won’t need to first record title, author, and ISBN – SpringPad will make all those connections for me.

Additionally, SpringPad comes with two features that support ease-of-use on my iPad: a quick shortcut to create a note directly from my desktop (rather than open the software and then select what I’m trying to create), and a Safari web page clipper that sits in my iPad browser’s shortcut bar. This is a handy way to take a snapshot of something that I can’t readily link to. An error message, perhaps. Or an online receipt.

Unfortunately, I haven’t utilized many of the cloud-based and co-authoring features available in SpringPad since the conference. My co-workers weren’t interested in learning another bit of software just so they could read my notes, which tend to be cryptic when they’re not rambling. Plus, I had other note-taking mechanisms in place. SpringPad quickly became an under-utilized app on my iPad.

EverNote

When I started this Sharpening the Saw exercise, I decided I’d check out EverNote. Why? While EverNote and SpringPad do practically the same thing, like, everyone has EverNote. I actually know people who are using it. It’s number 12 on Jane’s list of Top 100 tools..

At its heart, EverNote is that blank notebook on which you can record a great many things and arrange them to remind and prompt you into action. You can include pictures and audio, manually create checklists, etc. Just as in OneNote and SpringPad, you can group your notes into notebooks for easier access to the information you’ve stored.

But EverNote aspires to be more than just digital notepaper. With one account, you get access to a great many tools to support your activities while on-the-go. There’s an EverNote Web Clipper, which allows you to save a web page (from your PC’s browser) into a notebook. There’s EverNote Clearly, which allows you to save blog posts or articles into a notebook for reading later, without all the web distractions. There’s Skitch, which allows you to annotate pictures that you’ve saved in EverNote. EverNote appears to work well with third party vendors; there are a slew of programmers out there creating apps to make your EverNote experience easier. This is important, for it appears that these sorts of note-taking programs are best when you use them for all the stuff you take note of, not just a select group of things. I recall a blog post once suggesting that Evernote works best when you use it, gosh darn it, for everything.

One EverNote tool that I was quite interested in was Penultimate, an app that lets you write with a “pen” on your iPad. It’s a cool feature, once you get the hang of writing on a digital surface. If you’ve ever seen my signature scrawl when I sign for my credit card purchases at the grocery store, you know I need more practice.

Unfortunately, Penultimate ultimately didn’t pan out. My Penultimate notes had to be kept in a separate EverNote notebook, meaning: if I wanted to revisit what I drew, I wouldn’t be able to find them in the binder where I’d kept all my other (typed) notes on the topic.

One neat EverNote feature: audio recording that lets you type your notes while recording the conversation. SpringPad does record audio, but it doesn’t appear to let you type at the same time. This is a feature I wouldn’t readily use, given people’s reticence for being recorded, and state law requiring consent be made before I make any recordings, but it could be handy for future conferences.

What I’m Using

For now, it appears that OneNote will be my document curation tool of choice. Why? It’s integrated with all my work products. EverNote does work with Outlook to allow you to post emails into your notebooks, but that’s it. Although EverNote appears to be ubiquitous on the web, it’s just not as available where I need it to be.

For my mobile devices, I’m leaning towards SpringPad. It allows me to store my notes in the cloud for easy access and transfer to my OneNote notebooks (or wherever I decide they ought to go).
But I mostly use SpringPad to create checklists of action items when I’m in meetings. SpringPad’s checklist and task list templates make this much easier than fiddling around in EverNote. I imagine someone out there has created an easy-to-use app that works with EverNote, but I’m not motivated to search for it. Plus, I like how SpringPad itself integrates with my iPad, rather than rely upon a bunch of third party vendors to get the job done. Mind you, I might have a different opinion were I using an Android tablet.

A bit of advice, whatever you decide: it’s important to keep your notes with one tool. We’re all familiar with the “out of sight, out of mind” mentality, but equally important is our tendency not to bother searching for content (unless we really have to) if we’re not exactly sure of where it is in the first place. For nearly a year I hadn’t paid attention to my conference notes because I’d stopped using SpringPad. Now I’ve got some test notes in EverNote that I need to import into either OneNote or SpringPad, lest I forget them.

After my OneNote Sharpening the Saw post, several of you indicated you might try the program. If you have, and have used OneNote Mobile successfully for your on-the-go note-taking efforts, let me know in the comments!

*Skydrive is Microsoft’s version of cloud-based document storage. Like DropBox. Or Google Drive.

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(This was a high-level overview of two popular and powerful cloud-based note-taking tools. For a deeper look, check out this article: EverNote vs. SpringPad.)

Dude, Where’s My Ribbon?

MS Word with ribbon

Microsoft Office products are replete with keyboard shortcuts that are designed to save us time while working on our documents, but sometimes they can “inexplicably” trigger actions that flummox the user. For me, recently, I’ve been experiencing this flummuxation with the Office Ribbon.

Try this. Open Word (or Powerpoint, or Excel) and press the following keys: Ctrl+Shift+F1.

MS Word without the ribbon. All it needs is a blue background…

Neat, huh? If you’re in Word, you’ve got a text editor. If you’re in PowerPoint, there’s that much more space to design in. No fuss, no muss.

This can be a useful feature, but annoying if you don’t know how you got there. That’s because a hidden ribbon works just like a hidden task bar. Move your mouse to where that ribbon once dominated your screen, and it will appear to let you complete one command. Again, a handy feature when you’re putting stuff to digital paper and could use the space to focus on the task.

Ah, memories!

But if that’s not the case, and you were planning on using that ribbon to put some finishing touches on your document…

Ever accidentally switch an Office product to full screen? Feels like that.

I don’t know how I managed to press Ctrl+Shift+F1 and hide the ribbon in the first place. I might not have. I might have clicked on that small, unassuming chevron in the ribbon’s far right corner.  It took this article to figure out how to get the ribbon back.

And now that I know this, I have a new Office feature I’ll be using when writing or designing.

Sharpening the Saw: OneNote

All the way back in February I made a commitment to explore new tools in support of my professional development. This was inspired by a post by Jane Hart, social learning and collaboration expert. In my post, I pledged that the first tool I would discuss would be OneNote, and then we’d see where I’d go from there.

On Jane Hart’s Top 100 Tools, she briefly describes OneNote(along with EverNote) as a “note-taking tool.” I’d challenge that description as a bit confining – OneNote has a variety of uses that extend beyond note taking. Notepad is a note taking tool. OneNote easily serves more as a curation resource.

Let’s start with the basics:

Remember your TrapperKeeper back in high school? The one that you used to carry your class notebooks, and homework assignments, and notes, and pictures, and all that other stuff necessary to survival in high school? That’s OneNote.

Yes, you can take notes on it. But you can also store emails in that notebook. Or documents, Or images, including web screenshots and PowerPoint slides. Anything. In one place.

The Tip of the Iceberg

Different Nooks in the Iceberg:

Email

The Move to OneNote button in Outlook 2010.

Our company is heavily invested in email as its primary source of communication. So much so that several of us frequently max out our email server quota. There are ways to manage this, of course, but those ways frequently cause me to spend more time searching for the emails that I need than I’d like.

“Is it in my archives? No? Did I put it in the wrong folder? Maybe I’m looking for the wrong subject.”

OneNote has a convenient button in the Outlook Ribbon. Press it, and your email goes to the Notebook/Section Group/Section of your choosing.  Attachments will go with the email, openable from OneNote. PLUS, you can then change the title of the page on which the email is located to better find your notes after the fact. PLUS, you can type any of your notes to the page holding the email to add context.

Meetings:

From the OneNote 2010 Home menu, you can opt to insert Meeting Details into your OneNote page.

Once upon a time, I had tried to use Outlook as a central location for many of my notes. It made sense: I’m in there a LOT.

I attempted to keep my meeting notes in Outlook: for a brief moment, attached to the details of the meeting; for another brief moment, within a Journal entry that corresponded to the meeting time. Both methods required that I search for these notes later, and remember how and when I had stored them. “When was that meeting again?” became a tough question to answer with my meeting-packed schedule, especially since Outlook pulls old meetings off my active calendar after they’re done.  Now, I keep my meeting notes in OneNote.

OneNote allows you to insert the meeting details from your Outlook Calendar to provide context to the notes. I merely create a page for the meeting, placed in the appropriate notebook section, and select “Insert Meeting Notes.”  The meeting subject, date and location, and invited attendees will be inserted on the OneNote page.  If your Outlook Calendar has the meeting agenda included in the details, or some talking points to address, those will be included as well.

Things To Do:

You can sort OneNote notes into to-do lists, question lists, even Outlook tasks by selecting a (fairly) descriptive statement, and then clicking a tag.

I do a lot of project-based work. I’ve tried to use Microsoft Project to keep organized and set schedules, but I’m rarely successful. Again, it’s a matter of where the information lies for me. I can make a list, I can check it twice, but all the other stuff I need to be successful lies scattered in Outlook.

I tend to use tasks in Outlook to keep on top of the things I need to do. However, those aren’t necessarily project-based. (Yes, I do use the Categories feature, and that mitigates some of my  issues, but not all.)

Since I’ve already got a OneNote Notebook section set up to hold my project emails and meeting notes, it becomes an easy task to create a front page that lists all the tasks I need to associate with that project. I can then:

• Create a checklist  using the To Do tags.
• Mark items as important using the Star tags.
• Indicate a item I have a question about using the Question Mark tag.
• Use the “Insert Outlook Tasks” feature, which will place that task in my Outlook with a link to the OneNote page.

A caveat to this feature: I still need to be rather thorough in describing what I’m tagging. Let’s use the Outlook Tasks feature as an example: because it will appear in my Outlook, I’ll want to be sure that when I look at the task, it doesn’t make me scratch my head and wonder what I’m supposed to do (The details don’t transfer from OneNote to Outlook.). An example of what I mean: one of the first tasks I created in OneNote was: “Step One.” It made sense in the context of the page, because the page contained SO many more details and links, but it made little sense within Outlook.

Other stuff:

OneNote provides other tools for you, and suggestions on how to use them.

• You can store audio clips in your notebooks. You can even record a meeting in OneNote using your laptop microphone.
• You can send PowerPoint slides to a notebook, and annotate them. Useful for presentation reviews.
• I mentioned screenshot clipping – that’s a nice feature that many of the MS Office programs have. If you haven’t used that, try it out!  However, OneNote works with Internet Explorer to allow you to select content from a web page and send it to a notebook.
  There’s a lot going against IE, and I do tend to use Chrome, but this feature enhances IE’s usability.
• I  mentioned that I create a front page to list the tasks for a project. I can also create links on that front page to other pages in my Notebook – sort of a cross-referencing tool.
• I haven’t used the SideNote feature yet, which opens OneNote in a side window to capture notes while you’re reviewing content in another program. As an instructional designer, however, I can see how this could be useful in the Analysis or Evaluation phases.

Conclusion:

Frankly, there appears to be a lot that you can do with OneNote, and with each new discovery I find I’ve only scratched the surface of how much more I can do. I’m currently in the process of adopting OneNote as my central source for the information I need to do my job. I’m able to store my notebook on the network, and sync it to my computer’s hard drive. I’m able to reduce my “Outlook footprint” and hopefully the amount of time I search for notes and information buried within the emails I receive. I’m able to keep task lists and meeting notes close to other information surrounding the topics.

Ultimately, it’s all about collating the information I need in one space. For that, OneNote seems to fit the bill.

 

Footnote: Yes, there’s a plethora of other cloud-based note-taking software available. I mentioned EverNote at the beginning of this post. I’ll post in a little bit about why I’ve decided to cancel my EverNote account and stick with OneNote, and why I’ve retained my SpringPad account.

On Learning New Things – A Reminder

Last week, I got to “fly” an F-16 jet. Simulation. Pretty darned cool. Since we were beginners, the staff only activated three buttons (talk, fire, and brakes), the throttle, and the steering joystick. It was still pretty hard to fly. I “died.” Many times. And I thought: how does anyone fly this thing once all these other buttons are activated?

Later, I explained to my stepfather how to download an image from his Facebook Newsfeed. As I was guiding him to click this button, then that, he wondered: “Geez! How can you remember all this stuff?” I imagine his face had an expression similar to the one I’d had when I’d sat in the F-16’s cockpit.

These two interactions brought to light how foreign and overwhelming ANYTHING can be when someone’s exposed to it for the first time: be it a computer system, a new process, or a fighter jet. Next time I take on the task of teaching someone a new system, I’ll have the image of that F-16 jet cockpit to remind me.