Hey guys!
Classes are finally ending for those of you in semester system and to the ones in quarter system, stay strong, you will be done soon too! I personally think this is a relief for many because there will no longer be that thought in the back of your head questioning whether you had a zoom meeting or assignment due that day. Unless you are taking summer courses, this is going to be a nice breath of fresh air. Given that, I will be uploading more frequently and updating my resources list more often as well! Today, I want to share with you guys how I use OneNote to take and organize my notes! I am super excited to finally be writing this post and I hope you guys enjoy!
OneNote has many great features! To start off, I will explain how I organize my classes. OneNote gives you the ability to make separate notebooks! What I personally do that helps me keep everything organized is making a notebook for every semester. I found that it is easier to do this instead of creating a notebook for each class. With semester notebooks, I would only have to do eight instead of whatever number of classes I have to take which probably will be too many! There is obviously different ways you can do this but I have found this to be what works best for me!
Inside of each notebook I create sections for each course I am in. Since I take four classes, I made four sections. This is almost as if you had a three or five subject notebook and each section was dedicated to one class. If you where to make individual notebooks for each class, the sections can be for different chapters or different weeks. However, like I said before, I like using the notebooks for each semester and the sections for each class I take. As for where I would write my notes, I create pages within each section. Now, I found not too long ago a really nice system to organize my notes on Reddit. I created three sections within my pages and labelled them "Lectures", "Study Notes", and "Assignments". Each label is pretty self explanatory but this helps so much when it comes to reviewing my notes! There are different ways to sort out your notes. For example, I originally just made one page for each time I had to take notes but as I kept going, it was difficult trying to find the information I needed within all my writing. There is no wrong way to do this, as time passes by, you will find what works best for you!
Now, I will try to explain as best as I can how I take notes. I do a combination of typing and writing my notes. When I type my notes I normally just use regular white paper and 12 point Times New Roman font. Nothing too fancy. When I write my notes on my iPad, it is a different story. I change the paper to grid paper and use different types of pens and highlighters. There is also a nice feature where you can change the background color of your sheets. This is nice and comes in handy when you have been taking notes all day and are tired of staring at a white screen all day. My personal favorite color is the light purple one because its easy on the eye yet not too dark!
Some of my favorite pens consist of the first and second size black pen, the first size (smallest) white pen, the fourth size light grey highlighter, the second size grey pen, and the second size blue and red pens. I find that these colors are not too distracting for me and really help me stay focused. I like using the blue and red pens to go over my notes and annotate them! I have not been able to develop a proper and effective color coding system but I have seen many other people use one! I like using the thicker darker pens for titles and the thinner pens for the information written on each subject! With the highlighter, I use it to obviously highlight the important facts or main points that I want to stand out! I try using it as little as possible and only when it is truly necessary to avoid highlighting every other word! Another tool that I LOVE is the lasso select tool. It is so great because you are able to move sections you have written or drawn to different places to make everything more neat. Definitely take advantage of it!
Here are some examples of the notes that I have taken! Like I said before, I take a combination of notes! Lately, I have been obsessed with doing mindmaps! They are so helpful when studying! I normally am one to try and copy EVERY single word but these maps have forced me only to write what is IMPORTANT! I think everyone should try them out!
Around my maps I normally take notes in bullet points! I try to avoid writing complete sentences because that can turn into just copying word for word. It can be helpful to take notes before drawing out mindmaps! The maps can be used as a debrief in order to jot down everything you learned, almost like a summary!
I hope that yo guys where able to learn something from this! This is my first year using OneNote and I truly love it! It is so easy to work with and super convenient due to how accessible it is an almost every device! You can import lecture slides or articles onto a page and annotate it on here! You can copy a planner or calendar on here to keep the assignments that are due organized in one place! The possibilities are endless! I will make sure to update and share with you guys any new thing I learn about OneNote! Have you used OneNote? What is your favorite note taking app?
Until next time,
Diana