NoteBook | Who Uses NoteBook
NoteBook User Profile – College Teacher
1. What is your name and occupation?
My name is Eric Durbrow, and I am a college teacher of Human Development, Anthropology, and Psychology.
2. How does the Mac play a role in your professional work?
I use my Mac to write papers, plan lessons, keep track of scores, build websites (managed online), and analyze quantitative data and qualitative data.
3. How does NoteBook fit into your workflow?
At the moment, I use NoteBook primarily for teaching. Each course is a NoteBook and contains lessons, quizzes, essay topics, syllabi, readings from the web, and websites students should navigate to. I also use it strategically to present information in class and help guide discussions. I originally started with just one super-Notebook that contained everything including research papers, career stuff, and courses, but then I broke it apart into about a dozen different Notebooks. I would recommend starting with several small Notebooks rather than one large one, especially if you use clipping extensively.
In the near future, I will use NoteBook to develop two book proposals and rough drafts of the books. One book will be a textbook on cross-cultural human development. Each Page Divider will be a chapter and each page will be a section in the book. The book will contain a lot of graphics and many links to other websites. I want the textbook to tell a story and not just be a collection of sidebars and chart junk. I am hoping that NoteBook will help me develop a narrative (not an encyclopedia). I am toying with the idea of making this an Open Source textbook where other people can contribute to the project. This would not necessarily be a “wiki” project but it would be highly collaborative.
The second book project will be an ethnography (anthropological report) on my 10 years. of fieldwork in the Caribbean. Similar structure as above but fewer graphics and links.
5. What are your favorite NoteBook features?
First, the outline. I am a very hierarchical organizer and have been using outliners for years. It also helps reduce procrastination by “chunking” writing tasks.
Second, the ability to clip information into Notebooks.
Lastly, web publishing. I want my students to have access to my notes without bugging me all the time.
6. Has NoteBook replaced other apps?
Although NoteBook is not a word processor or presentation application, I rarely use Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, or Keynote. Word’s outliner cannot compare to NoteBook’s – it is less flexible. PowerPoint presentations and Keynote presentations put my students to sleep and, lately, there has been much fuss over whether such applications have helped ruin higher education. My students seem to appreciate an outline of my lesson, especially one they can help “grow,” as the lesson progresses. NoteBook seems more flexible or more changeable during the lesson setting.
7. How would you describe NoteBook?
NoteBook helps you start writing projects and reduce your paper files. NoteBook is very much like a filing cabinet except smarter.
