Notebooks

Discussions about the Notes and Journal tool on LDS.org. This includes the Study Toolbar as well as the scriptures and other content on LDS.org that is integrated with Notes and Journal.
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belnap
New Member
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Jan 28, 2019 7:59 am

Notebooks

#1

Post by belnap »

With the new Come Follow Me curriculum, I've really struggled with how to organize my gospel study, especially as a primary teacher. I am trying to understand and use the online Study Tools, but they seem highly unintuitive for me and I cannot find any documentation as to how to use them, how to even think about their organizational structure, and what might be some useful ways to use them.

I have been trying to create notebooks for certain topics and then create notes in each notebook around central questions that might come up. For example, this week, we are going to discuss the resurrection, so I created a notebook "Resurrection" and then in that notebook, I figured-out how to create new notes, so I created these notes:
"Who will be resurrected?"
"What does it mean to be resurrected?"
...

What I would like to do is add scriptures into each of these notes, so that during teaching, I can easily pull up relevant notes and quickly find relevant scriptures that I have added, along with having my thoughts in the notes. I can find a way to add highlighted scriptures to the "Resurrection" notebook, but no way to add the scriptures to specific notes in the Notebook. So:
1. Does anyone know how to do this? or if it is possible?
2. Does anyone know where there is documentation for these online tools?
3. Does anyone have some nice ways of organizing your study notes using these online tools (or other resources)?
mevans
Senior Member
Posts: 2049
Joined: Tue May 22, 2012 1:52 pm
Location: California, USA

Re: Notebooks

#2

Post by mevans »

You're trying multiple things and you have to find what works for you. That might be different than what works for someone else.

First of all, you might need to consider using a different tool for your purposes. There are many free and paid tools that can be helpful. Some examples include OneNote, EverNote, TheBrain.com, Apple Notes (if you're using Mac or iOS), various mind mapping tools, and various other free and paid note taking tools--there are several of them depending on your platform (web, Mac, Windows, Android, iOS, Linux). I mention this because people think differently and might gravitate toward certain tools that help them work the way they organize things in their brain. It's possible that the church's solution isn't what you need.

Now, on to the church note taking tool...
You should investigate how Tags work. They will likely help you. You can apply more than one tag to a note or selection and you can find notes by tags. You might want to consider Notebooks for something like "Primary Teacher," "Personal Study," "Parenting," etc. Like Notebooks, Tags are unique to you, so you create the tags that you think will benefit you.

I don't think you can make a note and add scriptures/magazines/etc. to it. I believe you need to highlight the selection in the content and create a note from there. Each note will have one selection in it. Now, suppose you find a good scripture or other content on Resurrection. Highlight it and add the resurrection tag. Then you can also put it in one or more notebooks. Maybe you want it in Primary Class, or maybe it's a personal study reflection, or maybe it's both. You can put it in which notebooks you feel it belongs.

A big missing feature for me in the new Notes is that I can no longer look at tags by Notebook--you only see all tags. I used to be able to do that and found it helpful. But, I keep taking notes as if it worked, as maybe they'll bring back that feature. That means you can only look by tag, but it can still be helpful to you in your lesson planning.

I hope this helps you explore features a little bit more. If you're still confused, post back with your experiences and people can help you.
naeglem
New Member
Posts: 2
Joined: Mon Dec 26, 2022 1:55 pm

Re: Notebooks

#3

Post by naeglem »

I agree with mevans July 2nd, 2019.

I have been seeking anything that will teach me how to use Notebooks. I downloaded LDS.org Notes and Journal How-to-Guide, version 1.0 and when I started trying to use it I quickly discovered the instructions in various areas were incompatible with the use of what we are using now. I also found a video about how to use notebooks and it to was not compatible with what we have now. I need to learn how to use Note Book before I can comment on how useful it is. Can you direct me to an up-to-date "'How To' document/video please?
mevans
Senior Member
Posts: 2049
Joined: Tue May 22, 2012 1:52 pm
Location: California, USA

Re: Notebooks

#4

Post by mevans »

I'm not certain about the resources the church has available for teaching you how to use the tools. I find most of the features to be fairly straightforward and have figured out how to use them by trial and error (I work with computers a lot and understand that my personal experience may not be what others experience...but I encourage you to try out things and ask specific questions in the forum if you have them). Since I wrote my previous post above, the church has also introduced the new "Study Sets" feature, which is yet another way to organize and group your annotations.
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