Wednesday, February 13, 2008

A scatter minded persons dream come true- OneNote

So I recently bought a Sony Vaio laptop from someone at Asbury that was used but only 8 months old. It came with Microsoft Office, Student Version. One of the software products that comes with Student Office is called "OneNote". OneNote is a program that is like Word on crack, with tabs! The tab system allows you to keep every document open, organized and editable in a few clicks. You can basically organize everything in the following way: Theme>Sub theme>Page. So I have a theme set up for Seminary/Spring '08. Off of that I have all of my classes each as it's own sub theme (ie.- Concise Greek, Methodist Polity, Matthew, etc.). And then off of each I have my lectures listed as their own pages off to the side (ie.- 2/12/08, 2/14/08, 2/19/08). I also have the syllabus listed as the first page of every sub theme. This has also been great because I am blitzed by ideas all the time and have always struggled with finding a way to keep and organize ones that I like. So, now I have a "Church Planting" theme folder. I have it broken up by the following sub themes: ideas, resources, events, rules to live by. Since I just attended a Wesleyan Church Planters Event I made a page off of "Events" named "Wesleyan Church Planters Event" and took all my notes there. So, instead of accessing "File", then "Open" and then opening the file "Church Planting" it's all one the page in front of you. So, you go to the left and click "Church Planting", go to the top of the page and click "Events" and go to the right of the page and click "Wesleyan Church Planters Event". Now that I have thoroughly confused you, let me just say I highly recommend Microsoft OneNote to anyone who could use a software system that will organize and compile all of your thoughts, ideas and work! I think it would be invaluable to anyone who is writing a book, in marketing, enjoys chaos journaling (yes, I made that up) or is in ministry and enjoys brainstorming. It has tons more features that make the software three times as user friendly as any other Microsoft Office software program. So, two thumbs up!!

No comments: