MondayLunchCrew

School does not expect us to buy computers for school or buy specific software, unlike those in the MBA program

During my undergraduate program, I had a computer, but it was a PC. It was used almost more for irc and email than school papers. Most of what I studied in school consisted of pages and pages of notes in equations and occasionally a computer program or two to write. A computer was not useful in note taking at all.

Skip ahead 10 years, and it’s a new world. I’m more hooked into my computer than ever (good or bad), my computers are now macs, and I am looking forward to using it in my learning process.

For work and my own personal productivity, I use curio and Omni products, and adobe products, with a lot of web browsers (cross browser testing). I rarely use any Microsoft software anymore given that there’s google docs. However, I still have a copy of office on my work mac and will need to continue to use office to some extent if I must for school.

Now, I’m looking at productivity tools for students. Most people who use PCs love OneNote. I do not plan on using that for school (since it’s only available for Windows.), so I’m looking for products that will help me take notes, gather material for research, and help with writing papers. I don’t see this masters program will require of me to copy a lot of formulae and equations from the board. I don’t expect to have to show my work and derive anything. Using the computer for note taking is now a possibility. Not bad since I really do type much faster than I write.

With the help of the Mac group on Ravelry*, I have been exploring a few more tools to see if I might want to add them to my arsenal of tools for school.

On top of Curio, I’ve been looking at Notebook, Journler and Scrivenr, Zotero, and Scrapbook, and will soon be playing with Notetaker, DEVONthink

It’s still a work in progress, and I’m researching some more programs. Throw some recommendations my way if you have them! Looking for anything really that you think is a fun and useful program. Whatever the application use. Who knows if I might find it useful.

In the meantime, testing continues. I’ll post results before school starts and we’ll see which ones I put down money to buy. Further into the school year, we’ll see how I make out with using them.

*Honestly, there’s a group for everything on there. I can find info on mac programs, help with my RPG games and even Animal Crossing playing partners!

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Tags:   Mac · software2 Comments