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Tuesday
Jan192010
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Backup Your Handwritten Notes

DateTuesday, January 19, 2010 by AuthorLuke Turcotte

Hundreds of back up solutions exist to protect your important computer data, but have you ever thought about the consequences of losing your class notes? The tools of your craft, the countless hours of hard work capturing the subtle hints the lecturer makes. Imagine leaving your binder at the library the day before a midterm or spilling a whole cup of coffee while reviewing yesterday’s 3 hour lecture? Unless you take all your notes on your PC, this is a very real problem just waiting to happen.

Problem: Risk of losing hand written notes.

Solution: Scan your notes and save them to your computer. 

The act of scanning all your lecture notes can be time consuming, but scanners with automatic document feeders (Epson WorkForce 610 for example) can simplify this task, adding only a few extra minutes to your processing workflow.  Although the price of such hardware may be out of most student’s price range, the peace of mind is well worth the cost. In addition to backing up your lecture notes, keeping digital copies allows you to leave your clumsy binder at home and travel with your notebook or access your notes on the go via Dropbox for iPhone. If you want to go all out, you can even use a Wacom tablet (Bamboo anyone?) to add additional notes to your digital note copies. 

The possibilities are endless, but at the end of the day you’ve protected yourself against the worst and that’s what’s most important. 

Questions or comments? Post them in the comments section below or fire me an email at luke@hackcollege.com

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Reader Comments (8)

This is a great idea! I have lost some of my notes plenty of times. I have the Wacom Bamboo Tablet, and I never thought of using it for writing. Sounds like a good idea though!

January 20 | Unregistered CommenterDan Northernn

good work !!!
nice

January 20 | Unregistered CommenterPageRank Checker

I was lucky enough to get a used Scansnap at Bestbuy a few years ago, its great, has an auto document feeder, and it is tiny (I travel alot).
I don't think I could have written my thesis without it and Devonthink.

January 25 | Unregistered Commentersade

Or, instead of using a document scanner, you could always take notes with a camera phone (atleast 1.3 megapixels) from a sufficient distance to cover your note pages. The quality is very surprising, and you can convert the images into pdf files in order to conserve memory.

January 26 | Unregistered CommenterXiggi

really good point. i do this subconciously with my nephew alot. i'll say stuff like: "wow, you are studying bar graphs in math!? it took me a week to figure them out but they are fun!" and i think it boosts his confidence to know that even his Aunt finds some things hard and that he doesn't have to feel bad when he struggles. i'm so glad i found your blog!replica sinn watches

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