Vista on a Tablet PC (and my resulting workflow)

Now that I've finally tracked down my sporadic ink issues to a bad pen (which coincidentally I ordered a replacement for the same day that the clip finally broke), I've get myself back into the habit of using my Tablet for school work. Each class is different, with different levels of use for things like notes, slides, handouts and whatnot. But I've gotten pretty comfortable with Vista on my Tablet, and along with Office 2007, things are moving pretty smoothly.

Here's kind of a snapshot of how I've set things up for my classes at the UW, and a bit of info on how I work with the tablet in one particular class.

First, I have a Notebook file set up for each class, as well as one for work, and one for "random junk". For each class, I have a section called "Syllabus". I log into Blackboard (which thankfully, each instructor I'm taking is using this quarter), and download an electronic copy of the syllabus. I then Select All, Copy, and Paste into a page, so that I have the text searchable (printing and using Send to OneNote 2007 doesn't seem to yield searchable text). Any other "first day" information will usually go in this tab as well, such as class schedule, unless we actually start to cover course material.

I set up new section for each lecture, usually titled by the theme (if there is one), or by the date. This particular instructor will give out the slides for each lecture early, however, they are only a preview (to encourage attendance, and to ensure the material has been read. I'll print these slides into a page for that lecture. In a new page, I'll take notes as I read the material for the day, with a new page for each assigned reading (so if there are three things to read, there are three pages). Any optional assignments will get another page as well.

During the lecture, I'll take notes right on the slides. For some lectures, if I don't understand the material well before hand, I'll record the lecture as audio (if the instructor permits ... some are touchy about that), and take just enough notes to make an audio bookmark and jog my memory. If we go off-topic, I'll start a new page in order to get those notes down. Any web resrouces mentioned get a quick lookup in IE, and either sent directly to OneNote, or copied and pasted using the Snipping tool (for stuff like graphs or charts).

Official assignments get their own section, where I'll copy and paste requirements and whatnot. Any research is compiled here as well, but the actual work is done in Word or whatever tool is needed.

Some classes require a journal. In those cases, I'll check with the instructor first to find out if using the tablet is acceptable. This quarter, one class requiring a journal had very unusual uses for it, namely that your journal can be used on quizzes. Luckily, this instructor offered to let me use my tablet in this fashion so long as I could limit what I see to just the journal. In this case, I'll put the Journal into its own tab to accomodate that request, but I'd probably have done that anyway.

That's just about it, though I'm sure I've forgotten things. If you have any questions or suggestions, let me know!