The notes are prepared as "gapped" notes using a Mac. The idea is that by having most of the tedious parts of the note-taking already written, the students can concentrate and listen more in class since they spend less time writing. The important content, however, is not included in the notes (these are the gaps), so that the students learn how to draw organic structures, learn how to do proper curved-arrow pushing etc in class. The students also "connect" to the material better when they write, and it focuses their attention on what is important.
The notes are prepared as a Microsoft Word document. The majority of the chemical structures and all drawings and figures are prepared using Chemdraw from Cambridgesoft. Orbitals and 3D structures are obtained using Spartan from Wavefunction. There are no "gaps" in the text part of the notes (to minimize student writing). The gaps are in that part of the notes that is prepared in Chemdraw, and those parts of the structures that are not to be included in the notes are drawn in RED. To further differentiate between the parts that are to be filled in by the students, the "handwriting style" font Comic Sans MS is used for the material that will be in the gaps. Arial font is used for the parts of the notes that are provided for the students.
The competed Word form of the notes are converted to a pdf file using the Adobe Acrobat pdf writer. A new pdf file is then created in which all of the RED gapped parts are converted into white using Pitstop from Enfocus. This generates a pdf file version of the notes that contains the appropriate gaps.
From the Word file, a complete version of the notes can readily be generated as the simple Word file, as a pdf document, or as an html file that can be posted on a Web Site. The notes also have direct html links to practice problems, and in some cases, links to more detailed explanations, and so the ability of Word to directly generate html is important, even though the html code that Word generates is terrible!
The students can either download the gapped notes as pdf files and print them, or they purchase the entire gapped notes set from a local copy shop, which is generally much less expensive than printing themselves.
The gapped notes are used directly in lecture. The pdf files are transferred from the Mac to a Gateway tablet PC. In the PC, the pdf files are opened and "printed" to a Journal Note file using the built in Journal Note Writer. The Journal file can then be opened and be written onto directly using the tablet pen. The Journal file is projected in class, the gaps filled in along with the lecture, the students complete their version of the notes in class along with the lecture.
The lecture is captured using Camtasia from TechSmith. The Camtasia files are saved in Flash format (5 frames per second). The only editing that is done is the addition of a title page in Camtasia. The Flash files are small enough that they can be posted for viewing without requiring a dedicated server.
Camtasia captures everything that appears on the tablet screen, also also voice. Several kinds of wireless microphone have been tried, all without success, since all suffered from interferences and other forms of unreliability. The built-in microphone on the Gateway tablet is used, it works well. The only problem is decreased volume if the instructor moves away from the computer.
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