5.2. Recommendations
Note taking applications offer countless possibilities for information management. They may be perfectly suited to all kinds of users and their needs. Nevertheless, several recommendations should be taken into account in order to make the most of these tools.
Using a notebook classification system. If notes are properly arranged, finding a specific piece of information you previously stored will be much easier. For this reason, note taking applications allow for the creation of notebooks and sub-notebooks (a similar system tot that of folders and subfolders in a hard disk) in order to arrange information according to a specific subject or set of criteria, and establishing different information levels. This function should be used properly, using as many notebooks and sub-notebooks as necessary, as most note taking applications do not limit this functionality.
Tagging notes. Using tags to classify notes according to key words, subjects, types of attached document, etc. is highly advisable. By doing so, finding the desired information is easier and faster.
Text information in images. As we have seen, classifying information in notebooks and tagging make information searching a much easier task. Moreover, the powerful search engine that is usually included in these applications also helps to find text included in the notes and in attached documents, even if they are images. This function will be particularly useful when searching for a word in scanned documents, hand-written notes or pictures on which notes were included.
Capturing text from websites. An interesting functionality of note taking applications are browser extensions or plugins, by which additional features may be added. Among them, there is a particularly useful one that lets users capture text on a website or e-mail and store it straight into a note, which may afterwards be read offline at any time. It is also possible to capture and store several web links found when surfing the internet.
Audio and video recordings. This functionality in the note taking application enables us to record an explanation, a piece of information or even a conference as an audio or video file, which may then be stored in a note file. This is particularly useful in academia and learning environments.
Sharing notebooks and network collaboration. Note taking applications make it possible to publicly share any notebook from an account and to create notes and notebooks to be used by several users. This makes it specially useful for group work in teams that need to collaborate virtually (by adding comments, content and files to the common notebook) or when trying to convey information to a particular group of users. This kind of tools also include a chat function to further facilitate communication between users.
Reminders and planning. We need to keep in mind that a note taking application may be an excellent planning tool as it includes a function to add reminders in notes. Reminders will be sent to users at the chosen day and time. Reminders will remain visible when accessing the application and they will be removed once the task has been finished or once the deadline is over.
In this way, you could easily manage your UOC coursework by creating a notebook named “Coursework to be done” and a note for each of the activities that included a reminder with its corresponding due date.