Palm and Treo Hacks

Become a Better Student

Use your Palm device to help you keep track of assignments and organize your time to become a better student.

Palm Powered handhelds can be extremely helpful for students because they allow you to carry all of your important personal information, as well as electronic references and e-books, in the palm of your hand. But unless you know the right tricks, you may not be using your handheld to its fullest potential. Whether you’re a high school, college, or graduate student, you can use your handheld to keep track of all of the information relating to your classes, ensure that you never turn in a late paper, and even get higher grades.

First, enter all of the relevant information into your handheld on the first day of class. Many teachers and professors hand out course information sheets or a syllabus on the first day, and many students put them in a folder or notebook immediately and don’t pay much attention to them. But this is the time to enter all of that information into your Palm Powered handheld, and you should capture everything you can:

• Go ahead and block out time for every class meeting by creating a repeating meeting in the Date Book [Hack #1] .

• Is there any contact information listed for the teacher or professor? At the college and graduate levels, you should expect to find a phone number, email address, office location, and the times the professor is available for office hours. Go ahead and add the relevant information to the Address Book and put the extra information such as office hours in the note for that entry.

• Are there any important due dates like papers, presentations, or tests? Go ahead and add those to your calendar as well. You might also want to consider adding an alarm for a few days beforehand to remind you of the event—and to make sure you don’t have to stay up all night studying for a test because you forgot it was coming up.

• Will you have to purchase any textbooks or reading packets? Add an entry to your To Do List reminding you to purchase them now; otherwise you may find that the books are sold out at the campus bookstore. Go ahead and make a To Do category for each class because you’ll be entering in more detailed information about your assignments as well.

Second, take all of your relevant class notes using your Palm OS handheld and an accessory keyboard, if possible. If you’re in high school, computers and handheld devices may not be allowed in the classroom, but college students should definitely be able to do this. This is helpful for several reasons, and can save plenty of time when you need to review and prepare for exams at the end of the semester:

• All of your notes will be backed up when you synchronize your device, so you’ll never have to worry about losing all of your work if a (paper) notebook is misplaced.

• Your notes will also be instantly searchable on both your handheld and on the computer, so if you need to look up a particular term, everything is right there and quickly accessible.

• You also won’t have any worries about trying to decipher quickly scribbled notes when you’re reviewing several weeks later. Even better, if you’re a relatively quick typist you can capture all of the information you need more quickly than writing, so that you’re free to focus more of your attention on the teacher and the lecture, instead of frantically trying to get everything down.

You can use the built in Memo Pad for this, or your device may have come with a word processing program such as Documents to Go or WordSmith. There are replacement programs for Memo Pad available, such as MegaMemo2 (http://www.freewarepalm.com/utilities/megamemo2.shtml), which allow you to have memos of 32K characters instead of 4K. No matter what program you use, the key is to ensure that it synchronizes with your computer so that you can back up and search your notes. You won’t need any paper in class, unless the subject you’re studying requires a good amount of drawing, charts, or graphs. There are several drawing programs available for Palm OS handhelds, but pen and paper are easier to use in a classroom setting.

Third, develop a regular study schedule. You can block out time in the Date Book for regular daily and weekly study, and it’s also a good idea to enter in all of the reading assignments that will be covered in each class period. You’ll be prepared for every class, and won’t have to worry about trying to “hide” in the back of the class so the professor won’t call on you. Regular review is also the key to effective test preparation; staying up all night before an exam can leave you too tired to answer the questions and write good essays. You’ll likely forget everything you crammed into your brain as soon as the test is over, which won’t provide a very good foundation for additional study.

Instead, take a look at what each test will cover and break the material down into smaller parts. You can then create To Dos in your Palm Powered handheld that remind you to go over a certain section in your notes or read a chapter in your textbook. And if you have a fear of writing papers and essays, as many students do, you can break that large task down into several incremental goals that are easier to accomplish. If you have to write a ten page paper on the history of the Civil War, for example, you’ll need to do some research, develop a thesis, block out some time to write and edit the paper, prepare a bibliography, and so on. Each one of those tasks can either be scheduled for a particular time on your calendar (if you suffer from procrastination, as so many students do!) or as a To Do item that can be checked off of your list when completed. By following a plan for writing your paper that provides plenty of time for preparation, you’ll end up with a superior finished product, less stress, and hopefully higher grades.

You may also want to consider purchasing more specialized software and resources to get the most use out of your handheld in an educational context. Some of my favorite applications and strategies are listed here.

Agendus

Agendus (http://www.iambic.com/agendus/palmos/) is a full featured PIM replacement that integrates the Date Book, Address, To Do, and Memo functions built into your Palm Powered handheld. Besides offering color coding, icons, and a variety of views for your data, it also adds a Contact Linking feature that is very powerful. Create a contact for each of your classes in a special category, such as English, History, Calculus, Physics, Spanish, and so on and then link that contact to each of the relevant pieces of information about that class—exams, due dates for papers, reading assignments, and so forth. You can then use the Contact History function to find everything related to that class at a moment’s notice. You can also add icons and color and use the monthly calendar to see which weeks are going to be the busiest so that you can plan ahead and perhaps do a few reading assignments early for one class so you’ll have time to prepare for an exam in another.

ShadowPlan

Notes taken in outline form are generally more organized and easier to review at a later date. One of the most powerful outlining applications available for Palm OS devices is ShadowPlan from Code Jedi (http://www.codejedi.com). You can create any number of outlines and also link individual items on those outlines to the built-in applications.

There are a variety of course management applications especially designed for students, such as 4.0 Student, CoursePro, Due Yesterday, and Thought-Manager for Students. You can find more information and links to all of them in the PalmSource How-To Guide for Students, located at: http://www.palmsource.com/interests/education_student/.

—Jen Edwards