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Programs For Students

R

Ruffian829

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 17, 2008
319
2
If there are any students out there using a mac in college, or even better in graduate school who could give advise on some good programs I'd really appreciate it!
Im starting law school in the fall and I am looking for a good note taking app, an outlining program (plus if they are one in the same!) a GTD program, and anything else that can help keep me organized and efficient as that is definitely not a strong suit of mine!

I've been doing a lot of research and can't seem to get my head wrapped around all the programs out there as they all tend to cover different aspects
I've looked at the Omni programs, Curio, Circus Ponies Notebook, Mori, and Scrivener for notes and outlining as well as OmniFocus, iGTD, Anxiety, etc for getting things done! Any reviews would be highly recommended!!

Thanks!
 
1st year law school students are typically in for big shocks . . . deer in the headlights, so to speak.

Unless they've changed over the years, classes are a mixture of lecture and interactive participation, so you'll not only need notes from your readings of the casebooks, you'll also need to maintain notes from the lecture & interaction.

For the reading assignments, brief writing using IRAC (Issue, Rule, Analysis, Conclusion) is still the standard in law school and when regurgitating on exams and the bar exam. Either setup a template or find a program that can accomodate that structure. If you've ever seen a Gilberts outline or BarBri books, you'll recognize the structure.
 
Great thread, I was wondering about the same types of apps... I will be interested to see what turns up here.

I find myself reading a lot of pdf journal articles and using the post-it, rectangle, and highlight features of preview to mark them up. After that I just attach them to references in endnote (i don't think law students use that though..) Its not the best method, but its free.

Word 2008 also has a note taking feature, although its not as "easy to use" as I would like.

I don't want to hijack the thread, but does anyone know of a good way of taking notes in powerpoint? Aside from the notes feature beneath the slide?

-- since you asked about education levels, I'm a 1st year med student
 
well a great if not the best organizing app is things. it helps u get things done or at least thats there slogan. i find it rto be a great app. also if u dont have a office suite which i think u do i recomend neooffice. its great its free its better than microsoft office
 
Bean is a terrific word processor, fast and free!

Journler is a great app for taking notes and organizing them by day, by tag, etc. It easily imports lots of file types too, like .doc and .pdf, so it could be a one-stop shop.

There are plenty of snippet keepers. Caboodle, Yojimbo, EagleFiler are good ones.

mt
 
Thanks for the replies. I've currently downloaded the trial versions of the following:
OmniOutliner, Circus Ponies Notebook, Mori, and Screniver,
as well as iGTD, Midnight Inbox, and anxiety

I've also downloaded NeoOffice.

I have no idea how, exactly, I am going to be able to tell which program will work best with my classes, as I have no clue what my classes will entail, but I want to find a program, purchase it, and get comfortable with it before classes, so I'm not trying to figure this all out on the first day!

Upon first glance, I like screiver and circus ponies notebook- I think that OmniOutliner may be a bit to structured with me. I like with the Notebook how it has different tabs, I read a post here: http://maclawstudents.com/blog/product-reviews/circus-ponies-notebook/ where a poster describes how he used it for classes. I'm not a fan of the "virtual notebook" interface, although I am looking for essentially a virtual notebook, I'm not sure I want it to look like a notebook on my screen... but I'll play with them a bit and see how they check out

I'll be sure to take a look at voodoo pad also!

thanks a ton already, as always, more tips are always appreciated!
 
macgrl said:
Hi longwood, do you know of any other personal wiki type apps. They look like they could be a good idea for me :)
Click to expand...

I don't. The lite version is free but definitely lacking some features. The regular version is definitely worth the price, IMO.
 
A great program for taking and organizing notes (including links, videos, pictures, pdf's, screen shots, etc.) is iOrganize, I am hooked on it since about 4 years ago. It includes a services module to create new notes of everything you have selected on your mac with a shortcut.

For GTD I use iCal with the free Flexcal add on, that way, new To-Do's are always only a keyboard shortcut ahead.
 
As a business student I found Pages works very well using bookmarks, hyperlinks, comments (stickies), and it's search feature.
Also for pure memorization, Keynote is very good for creating flashcards.
"Skim" is great for pdf's.
 
thanks again for the replies- I am definitly going to check out iOrganize and Skim. I've been doing the basic google searchs for all these programs but there doesn't seem to be recent reviews out there, a lot of them are from way back (2005-2007 ish) and a lot of the programs that were good back then have lost support now, which is why I figured this is the best place to ask!
 
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