The Journal Newsletter
Introduction
Welcome to Spring 2001! For those of you lucky enough to still get Spring Break, I hope it was (or still is) fun! =)
This month’s “How I Use The Journal” article by Kent Eaton focuses on how he uses The Journal in “alternative learning.” Since my wife & I are homeschooling our son, I was particularly interested in this. If anyone else has an education-related journaling theme they want to write about, I would love to hear from you.
Susan is back with another couple of writing exercises, and I present a short explanation of the useful-but-obscure “Paste Special” in the Tips & Tricks section.
Thank you for supporting DavidRM Software’s The Journal!
Tips & Tricks
TIP: Using “Paste Special” (CTRL+SHIFT+V)
“Paste Special” has been on the Edit menu for a while now, but not until The Journal’s 2.4 release was it given a hot-key. As an aside, I’ve found that now that I’m used to it, I want that hot-key to work in MS Word also… 😉
Paste Special allows you to control the format of the text (or whatever) that you copy-and-paste into The Journal. Usually, you will have 2 or 3 options available when you choose Paste Special:
- Rich Text Format – This will preserve all formatting of text, and even any images or other “objects” that are embedded in the text.
- Rich Text Format Without Objects – This is the same as Rich Text Format, but it strips out any non-text “objects” that may be included in the text.
- Unformatted Text – All formatting is removed from the text, and all “objects” are removed. This is generally the most useful option, though the others do serve certain purposes.
For example, if you select the text of a web page and use the normal paste function to put the text in an entry, you will get “residual formatting”–and most of it unwanted and rather ugly. To paste just the text, and preserve the paragraph breaks that are sometimes lost in pasting web page content, choose Paste Special from the Edit menu (or use Ctrl+Shift+V) and select “Unformatted Text”.
Other choices you may see on Paste Special:
- Windows Bitmap – Usually refers to any kind of image that has been copied to the clipboard.
- Microsoft Word Document/Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet/Etc – Generally, you’ll see these only if you’ve copied a file to the clipboard from Windows Explorer.
Writing Prompts
by Susan Michael
Free Writing Exercise – Using the following phrase as a starting point write for 20 minutes without self editing:
- toughness, cruelty
- toughness, strength
About the author: Susan Michael calls herself the “Poetry Enabler” and is active in spoken word poetry. She has facilitated several writing groups, and lead writing & creativity workshops for the Arts & Humanties Council in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
How I Use The Journal
Editor’s Note: The Journal is used by people from all over the world, from many nations, representing a variety of personal, professional, and religious backgrounds. Journaling is by definition an intensely personal undertaking, so it should not be surprising that when someone writes about how or why they keep a journal that they will end up sharing personal information. The Journal Newsletter does not support any particular personal or religious lifestyle, but rather attempts to support anyone who keeps a journal, for whatever reason they do so. Thus, the views and opinions expressed in “How I Use The Journal” are solely those of the submitter and not necessarily the views of DavidRM Software. Whether you agree with the submitter’s views or not, I encourage you to read the article and glean from it the information and techniques that “ring true” for you.
How I Use The Journal
by Kent Eaton
I was asked to write about using “The Journal” from an alternative learning point of view.
Alternative learning, as viewed by myself and the organization I represent, refers to learner-directed learning. Home-schooling environments, and more so, unschooling environments reflect this natural learning process.
Natural learning, or “authentic” learning, is that process which starts within a person (child or adult) as an impulse, a desire to understand something which he or she has discovered to be of interest. When such natural learning has not been suppressed, it manifests profoundly and with greater speed than one “learns” via traditional teaching concepts and schools. Just think of something you really enjoy doing and remember how you learned to do it.
The adaptability of “The Journal” to people within these free learning environments is fascinating. Mainly this is because the user interface allows and encourages the user to incorporate their own values and ideas into the program. User-named categories, instead of having to try and fit information into a pre-existing category, are analogous to the process of natural learning itself, in which the learner chooses what to learn, and chooses how to integrate what has been learned into his or her view of themselves, rather than just following what is expected of them by others.
For example as webmaster of http://alternative-learning.org/ I have established the user name INTERNET (Here again, one can create multiple user names for different purposes) within which I set up the following categories:
- ALorg category (loose leeaf) with many self labelled entries which relate to ALorg.
- ALorg update (daily) for keeping track of progress of updating the web sites.
- HTML (loose leaf) to keep special codes and information.
- Mailing Lists (loose leaf) with many entries like: addresses, subscriptions, comments, etc.
Also because “The Journal” can store anything in an entry (pictures, spreadsheets, and more), it is a self-motivated learner’s dream. Because it is so configurable to the users choices and creative imagination, it stands as a real alternative for creative, self thinking, self motivated people, and especially for environments which support such self-determination.
Kent Eaton
http://alternative-learning.org/
Submission Information
If you would like to contribute to the “How I Use The Journal”, “Writing Exercises”, or “Tips & Tricks” sections, or would like to submit an article about journaling, writing, or another The Journal-related topic, we would love to hear from you.
Submissions for the newsletter should be sent to: support@davidrm.com
If you are submitting for a particular section, please indicate which one. Try to limit your submissions to 500-1000 words. Submissions may be edited for length and content.
If you prefer to remain anonymous, please state this in the email. Otherwise your name (but not your email) will be used in the article heading.
As always, if you have any suggestions for, or bug reports about, The Journal, please feel free to email them. Both are always welcome.