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OneNote 2007 AND 2010:

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Recently, I had the opportunity to attend the DevCon 2011 eLearning Conference in Salt Lake City. One of my favorite conferences to attend, I always return energized with new ideas to share with our Learning Development team. While I was able to attend sessions on eBooks, virtual classrooms, internationalization of content, eLearning design, project management, memory and the generational effect on learning, the hot topic this year was mLearning.

A burgeoning subject, mLearning is still a mystery to most learning developers. It comes in so many varieties of flavors and formats that there’s no single magic formula telling us “this is how you do it.” With the rapid growth of mobile technology, there’s always something bigger and brighter right around the corner, and having a moving mLearning target makes development difficult. You can ask a handful of mLearning developers what’s the best way to create content and you’ll get a handful of different ideas. Realize that because mobile is cutting edge, there are no standards in place, so there’s no single right way to do it…yet. I did return with a handful of excellent takeaways on the topic of mLearning:

1. Don’t go mobile just because it’s the thing to do. Identify why you’re doing it, if you really need it and if you have content suited for mobile delivery.

2. Don’t throw all your learning eggs into one basket; mobile is just one more tool in your training arsenal. It doesn’t replace; it enhances and reinforces.

3. Designing for mobile is different from eLearning. Going mobile we lose options. Stick to the basics: text, images, audio.

4. Know your dimensions. If it’s too small to read, it’s not consumable.

5. Look for a tool that allows you to develop once and deliver to multiple devices: iPad, iPhone, BlackBerry and Android.

6. With the growth rate of mobile technology, identify what you can do now, consistently and rapidly.

7. Tools don’t build courses, we [learning developers] do.

If you ever dreamed of the day you could do away with printed three-ring binders full of paper and information, then OneNote is your dream come true. A notebook in OneNote is the equivalent of a binder, with each notebook section the equivalent of a paper tab, and the pages inside being places to write down notes and collect and organize information. But, OneNote goes beyond traditional note-taking pads and three-ring binders and far beyond other note-taking tools of the past.

OneNote combines the flexibility of a legal notepad with the efficiency, organization and accessibility of a computer. Lawyers and their staff can now write, organize, reuse and share their notes on any laptop, desktop or Tablet PC. It is ideal for lawyers, paralegals, law clerks, legal assistants and law students, who are assigned to the same cases, are in the same practice group or work on matters that involve more than one practice group and share information.

OneNote allows its users to collect a wide-ranging array of information, including text, graphics, Web pages, and video and audio files. It allows you to search not only text, but also text within graphic files and speech within audio and video files as well. Suddenly, all your information can be kept in one place that is easily searched, changed and shared.

“As more of our working life happens in the digital world, whether tethered to a desktop or roaming freely with a mobile device, OneNote allows you to gather, collect and organize information into one location,” says Tami Schiller, Learning Specialist/Futurist for Traveling Coaches. “Even better, OneNote is available to you on your desktop or from the cloud so your notes and research are always within reach.”

As lawyers become increasingly mobile, it is important to be able to keep information with you at all times. Now, you can share OneNote notebooks between your desktop and your laptop. If you need to collaborate with others inside or outside your firm, you can effortlessly share notebooks with other OneNote users, with OneNote automatically handling any changes.

Plus, OneNote does not require you to save your work before moving on to another page, or when closing a notebook. Additions or changes are automatically saved eliminating the worry of losing all your work and vast amounts of data.

OneNote can be used to compose trial notebooks or to manage client files. There are various legal-specific templates available from Microsoft’s OneNote template page, including a trial notebook, legal client notebook, legal practice notebook, meeting minutes and more.

For a complete presentation and more information on everything from how to set up a notebook to how to make it work best for your individual firm’s needs, be sure to attend Tami Schiller and Rex Balboa’s educational session at the ILTA 2011 Conference. More Information