How to use Backpack for School

The following tutorial illustrates how to use Backpack as a total note taking solution while at University.  I am currently attending night school (well, I start next week) and have optimized Backpack specifically for taking usable class notes for three classes that meet each week.

You will need the following materials:

• A Backpack Account (sign up)
• Course Name and Number
• Instructor Name
• Schedule
• Laptop and wireless connection (recommended)

If you don't have a backpack account, you'll need to create one.  I recommend starting with the basic account.  It will cost you $5 a month and in my oppinion, good notes and grades are worth it. Even at $10 a month, I would still use this system.

Note: I'm using a free account for the screen captures, but you definitely want a paid account so that you can create plenty of pages and set reminders for due dates for things like papers, exams, or field trips.

1. Getting Started

The first thing you want to do is edit your Home Page.  If you want, you can build a table out with your schedule.  In Backpack, building tables is easy.  You can use the following code to build a table:

|Course #|Description|Instructor|Location|Schedule|
|IT 700|Decision Sup Systems|Larson|uptown|M|
|IT 701|IT Sys Management|Siry|room.102|W|
|IT 702|Project Management|Dan|Morningside|F|

You can use this page for more information on formatting.

2.  Master Class Pages

Make a new page for each of your classes so that each class has a link on the right side bar. These are what I call the 'Master Class Pages'    The content for Master Class Pages is entirely up to you. 

 

3. Getting Linked Up

From the Home Page, create a link to each of your Master Class Pages.  You can do this by using the links tab.  Just be sure to link to an existing page rather than create a page from a link.  What this does is tie your homepage to each of your Master Class Pages and each Master Class back to the Home Page. Your Home Page should now look like this:

At this point, you have some basic navigation in place, and its time to start attending class, building pages, and taking notes.   You'll need a system, however, to keep Backpack neat and tidy once classes have started.

4. Daily Class Pages

The first Master Class Page that you created was Decision Support Systems.  This page will be your starting point every time this class meets because you will create Daily Class Pages from this page by using the links functionality. When I create a Daily Class Page from a Master Class Page, I use a naming convention.   From this particular Master Class Page, I will create a page (using links function to create a new page) called DSS 18 August 2005. I just take the abbreviation of the class followed by a date. This allows the pages to be identifiable by class and date.

Note: After you create a daily class page , you'll see that it appears on the right sidebar.  You don't want that. Just use the 'remove from sidebar' link at the bottom of that page.  The sidebar is just for high level navigation.

5. Tags

Now that you have created a Daily Class Page from the Master Class Page, titled it using the naming convention, removed it from the sidebar, you can now take notes, set reminders, and upload images...Each Daily Class Page that you create now represents a day when that class met and its all tied to its Master Class Page.  Cool, right?  You are on your way to having the ultimate system for taking notes on any college campus.  I'm sure of it. The only thing that could make this system better would be through the use of tags.

Since each Daily Class Page is tied to a Master Class Page, things are pretty well organized.  Over time, however, you are going to have a lot of information, and information retrieval (and relevancy) will become more and more crucial.  Tags will allow you to label each page that you create with bits of relevant information.

For example, I create a daily class page called DSS Aug 22 2005 from the Master Class Page.  In that class there is a guest lecturer speaking on Ecommerce and Ruby.  The rest of the class was devoted to exam preparation and a discussion on hiring practices, compensation, and exit strategies. Since I have the ability to tag my pages, I would tag that Daily Class Page with  speaker, Ruby, hiring, exams. I can use these tags later to retrieve similar pages on Ruby, or see all the classes where there was a speaker. 

The following screen capture illustrates the use of tags, an example of a daily class page, the right side navigation, and a link back to its master class page.

While Backpack wasn't necessarily designed to be the ultimate solution for taking class notes, it is certainly a by-product of this application. This framework and process for note taking in a networked academic setting is truly an adventure in using Web applications for learning.  I'm able to create legible notes in an organized manner, tag them for retrieval, and even share them. Sure beats using a pen and paper.

Comments

[Emily Hambidge]

Awesome post! Thanks!

[Todd]

Great post, but when I click your link to see more on text formatting, it asks for a password. I think you need to make this page public.

[Pagini]

Since I didn't create the page, I can't determine how to make it public. Any thought? Am happy to email the contents.

Cheers

[Core.B]

Those are some great ideas. I already created a page for each class, but I didn't think about a master page.

Something else to consider: I used a specific day for a tag for my classes. All Monday, Wednesday, Friday classes had those three days listed in the tags. Now when I want to see what classes I have on Monday, I just hit the Monday tag and go through each class.

[pagini]

Thanks for the note. While I hadn't thought about tagging the page with a day of the week, I did think about tagging it with the instructor's name and/or class number.

[ryan]

thanks for this article! i have been using backpack, but was looking for more ways to integrate it into my life. now to find out if all my classrooms have wifi

[Core.B]

So what happens next week when you run out of pages. I have the basic account, and if I were to do a daily page for each class I take, I would probably run out middle of next week. I am just doing it where each class has a page, and day's worth of Notes per page.

[pagini]

I thought about this as I was writing the post. Since I am only taking 2 classes a week at night (I'm a grad student) I can get by with one of the more limited accounts.

It may not be cost effective if you take a full schedule of classes each week as you would eat through 100+ pages in a semester.

You do have the option of just keeping one running page per class. You can do this but I think your tags become less effective as you would only have 5 pages and the tags become less relevant.

[Jenna Pfister]

I use a similar system. I use the notes function for the most part and when a special project comes up, I link a new page.

[Clinical Cases and Images]

Why don't you just use Word and post to Blogger with the new plugin Blogger-for-Word?

[grumpy]

searching? grep? find? reformatting? plenty of reasons to use emacs with .txt files that i upload to any old ftp site.

[Gerard]

I have tried using Backpack and find my good old TexNotes is far easier. http://www.gemx.com/products.php
The one advantage with Backpack is having it online and easy to access from anywhere.

[James]

What do you use to take notes in class? I can guess the usual suspects. Just like to see what people like.

[Justin Koh]

Great idea, but Backpack is pretty limited. I'd recommend a full-featured wiki (there're plenty of free hosted ones out there).

[Jim Abraham]

Great idea! Can't wait to start using it!

Jim

[Joe Block]

Rather than depend on a wireless link being up, why not just install mediawiki on your laptop? If it can handle the load of wikipedia, it certainly can handle your note taking :-)

[eric]

your website is very hard to read

[John Ratcliffe-Lee]

I've adapted this system to Campfire (which seems to be a more intuitive note-taking program compared to Backpack) and received mention on Lifehacker.com as well as 37signals' blog, Signal vs. Noise.

http://jratlee.newsvine.com/_news/2006/04/13/165058-campfire-gtd