This week is the start of school for me. It's almost over, just two more semesters to go! This semester is also the first semester that I will be participating in 3 classes (2 of which are online) and working about 40 hours between 2 jobs. It should be an interesting semester.
For the curious, I will be taking Library Administration & Management (a required course for the LIS program), Information Policy (a required course for my Information Management certificate), and Information Architecture (not required, but of course really excited to take).
The week started rough but I managed to muddle through it all yesterday. Being sick with a cold hasn't helped my motivation.
I'm going to try to extend my decision to go paperless over to schoolwork as well. I really don't like to read on a computer, but I think I'll have to get over that. Journal articles are long and if you have to read a number of them during the week, that amounts to a lot of dead trees.
First off, I had to fill in some question and answer type things for one class, I did those in Google Docs. Since I'm pretty browser dependent, it just seemed easier to do that sort of stuff there than to fire up Word (I did use Word for an essay because I can format pretty there). I am a bit interested in some of the Microsoft Live online tools I've been hearing about, I might want to try those out, but I'm a huge fan of Google Docs.
I plan to use my iPhone as a way to keep copies of my journal articles, if I have a few minutes here or there I could conceivably read for class (huge hypothetical I know, but it's the beginning of the semester so I can be optimistic still). Two applications will help me out here, DataCase and Instapaper. DataCase will let me save files directly to my phone over a wireless network, including pdfs, which most of my journal articles will likely be. Instapaper is a great application that allows me to save web pages, and the great thing about the app on iPhone is that link will also be available offline.
I also plan to use Evernote a lot for storing and organizing notes. Since this service extends directly to the iPhone, it will also be available to me wherever I go. If I'm not mistaken the latest version now allows you to edit notes.
Currently I work on 3 different computers, I tend to do a lot of checking in on course things when I'm not at my laptop. That's where Windows Live Mesh is awesome. I only have the software set up on my laptop (well, also on my XP laptop, but I don't turn that computer on much anymore), but I sync my school folders from my laptop to my Live Desktop. Anything I add to the Live Desktop when I'm not at home will automatically be synced to my computer the next time I log in. That works the other way too. My course files will always be accessible and I don't have to save 3 copies of the syllabus to different places because I forgot when my assignment is due.
I still plan on taking notes using my fancy new pen (which I probably still need to blog about) and my fancy new notebook, but that results in digital output. Sometimes a pen and paper is just easier to carry around with you.
