Comments about printing lessons from the computers

PLEASE, DO NOT print out these lessons in bulk. It is wasteful of resources, it ties up the computers so that fewer people can use them, and the lessons really don't work that well on pages, anyway--you lose the links to images, definitions, and answers. If too much material is printed, it may endanger the ability to offer free printing in the computer lab.

To take notes on the lessons:

Instead of printing the material in bulk, study the lessons in the student lab and copy bits and pieces from them that you want to review later. You can do this by running a word processor (such as Microsoft Word) or simple text editor (see below) at the same time as Netscape, with it's window behind Netscape. When you come to a section of text you wish to save, select the text in Netscape by dragging the mouse pointer over it with the mouse button depressed. Then choose copy from the edit menu (or press command-c), click on the word processor window, and paste in the text (or command-v). You can also add your own comments and headings to this notes page. Remember to save your notes file to the hard drive frequently as you go through the lesson. At the end of the lesson, copy your notes file to a floppy disk or print it, and delete it from the hard drive. You can probably distill all the notes you need to make on one lesson down to one or two pages.

Although you can't copy images to your notes page this way, you can add in a couple of comments on your notes page about an image and even leave several blank lines for a quick sketch. You may find that sketching the important features of certain images is better for learning than merely copying the image and staring at it later.

This type of note-taking is sometimes better done using a simple, fast text editor rather than a big, full-featured word processor. I've placed a little, high-quality text editor called "Tex-Edit" on the Macs in the student lab. It's accessible from the Apple menu. If you use it, just keep your text in "block" style with blank lines separating paragraphs and headings (this little editor doesn't do tabs or other fancy formatting--that's one reason it's so fast). When you paste text into Tex-Edit or a word processor, you may find that there are unwanted "returns" present, causing some lines to end prematurely. In Tex-Edit, you can fix this easily. Just select the text you want to fix (using the mouse) and choose "Modify Selection" from Tex-Edit's Special menu (or press command-m, see below).

Then click the option "Strip CR/LF's" in the Line Endings section of the box that appears (see below).

Finally, click "OK" and your text should be fixed (it's quick--just a selection, menu choice, and two clicks). Don't select lists for fixing like this or you'll squish the lists into a paragraph (in that case, you want the lines to end where they do).

I think you'll find Tex-Edit very convenient for this type of work. Its files are readable as "text-only" by word processors and other text editors such as TeachText. Incidentally, if you would like a copy for your own use, it's freely copyable as shareware (mail $5 to the author if you decide to keep using it at home).

J. Harrison