Category: Variety of uses

“WhizFolders as a Learning Tool” by Peter Dodge

People wanting to learn a new subject or extend their knowledge often find that it helps to restructure information from books, articles, Internet, etc. into an organization that makes sense to them.

This process has three main benefits:

  1. Promotes extra attention on the information.
  2. Relates new information to the existing understanding.
  3. Develops the skill of creating summaries.

All of these are known to help people remember more information than simply reading.

WhizFolders directly supports this enhanced learning by:

  1. The transformation from an information source into WhizFolders forces you to focus more attention on the material to be studied. The mental process is one of trying to summarize or pick out the main points from the information source in order to translate it into Topics. As the reading and study continues, the Topic structure is often revised to conform to the latest understanding. WhizFolders is ideal to support this 2-way process of information summarizing and structuring. All this extra focus on the new information, although taxing at the time, is actually helping you remember it!

  2. Developing the WhizFolders Topic List (and Jump hyperlinks) maps the new material into a structure which conforms to your existing way of thinking. Since you create the WhizFolders structure, it is your attempt at understanding the subject. As more material and Topics are created, new ways of structuring the Topic List (and linking it using the Jumps) occurs. Once again, as you struggle to organize and reorganize the material, it is actually increasing your understanding of the subject area.

  3. Since it is tedious to simply copy complete sections from books and printed materials into large word processor documents, or just blindly save the web pages into different files; the WhizFolders Topics concept encourages you to summarize the key information into a short note form. The challenge of deciding if the key information should be a Topic in the List or a note in a Topic is also good discipline and a useful part of developing the skill of summarizing information. The notes you write should be as short, clear and information rich as possible. This is a skill which can be reused time and again in many other written forms, e.g. report writing, important e-mail, giving written instructions, meeting notes and summaries, etc.

Some may recognize this process as similar to an exam revision. To a large extent this is true. Although this may not evoke pleasant memories for some, it was probably a time when you felt that you learned a great deal.

Use WhizFolders as a Learning Tool for any subject that requires reference to more than one information source (or even a single source, if required). Create Topics for each important aspect using outlining techniques and your current understanding of the subject. Also create Topics for each of your information sources, using links to the web, files on disk, or short summary notes of the books and articles you read.

Encourage yourself to create many types of Topics if you are unsure how to structure the information (e.g. Subject Areas, Key Themes, References, Test Structures), but do not invest vast amounts of time linking them all with Jumps until you have a structure you feel comfortable with (but do put in the ‘obvious’ Jumps – i.e. the Jumps that you think are important, these usually stay in anyway).

Experiment with the Topic List structure whilst trying to focus on organizing the subject in your mind. What are the main subject areas, in your opinion? If the book/article/information you are looking at uses a different organization, reorganize it into your way by taking notes from the source and writing them as Topics into your structure.

If you create many Topics as short notes from books and articles, make sure you keep some text with the Topic of where it came from (e.g. a Jump to the reference Topic). If you rely only on the Topic List structure to show where it came from and then re-order the Topics, the source may easily be lost.

Encourage yourself to summarize the key points from your different sources, even though this is quite a demanding task. It will force you to really focus on the important points and ignore less relevant material. Write the reference page number or exact point where the information came from in your note text so that you can go back to it later during your reviews. If you read away from the computer, take some manual summary notes with paper and pencil and rewrite them into WhizFolders later (this 2-step process is excellent for concentrating on the content first – paper – and the structure second – into WhizFolders).

The WhizFolders development of your subject can be as short as 1 day or may take many years. Using WhizFolders allows you to naturally organize information in the way that makes sense to you. Sometimes we feel the need to be given a structure for a subject (because we may be new to it, for example), rather than create it ourselves, but generally if you look at some of the subject overview information sources, the contents pages will suggest some likely key areas. WhizFolders makes it easy to reorganize anyway.

To conclude, these are just some initial thoughts to using WhizFolders as a Learning Tool, albeit based on using WhizFolders for several years. This may be a subject that can be developed over time as more people think about how they use WhizFolders to aid their learning and structuring of information and then contribute to this weblog.

— Peter Dodge

Peter works in IT and Telecoms and has interests in psychology and in music (piano playing).

Sharing the documents for use at work and at home

Question: I use Whizfolders and love it. My problem is that I can have it either at home or at work. My home computer is a desktop and the work computer is a laptop. At the moment my Whizfolders is on my home computer and I have an evaluation copy on my laptop. It is invaluable and as a teacher, I do most of the work at home but need to access all the ideas and plans at work. Is there a way to do this or do I have to purchase another copy? If I do this, how can I share the folders between both computers or copy them across?

As for your first question, no, you don’t need to purchase a second copy. You can use your license on the laptop too as long as you are the only user using it on both machines. Just download a paid version installer from the special web site support.avnitech.com and use it on the laptop to install.

Your second question: You can copy your .wzfolder document files to the laptop to use them at work. But, you will have to remember to update a file from one computer to another when you make changes. There is no automated syncing available for that unless you use a software like Dropbox. See Using Dropbox to access your notes from many computers

If you do not understand where the document files are and how to copy them, please understand the concept What are WhizFolder files.

Sharing the documents over LAN or through USB, Flash drives: You may also decide to keep the documents always on the laptop and use them over the LAN from your desktop. If you do that, remember that LAN writes are not very reliable in Windows and there might be a data loss at times if the data is not flushed out properly. Same thing is true when you use flash or USB drives. In both these cases, you must take regular backups of your documents.

Use the new Backup feature: In any case, it would be a good idea to use the backup feature in the new WhizFolders to keep a regular backup copy of your documents, both at work and at home. It allows you to even keep multiple copies of a document, separate for each day.

Using WhizFolders Organizer as a time keeper

I often use WhizFolders Organizer to keep track of the time I use on various activities. I just keep a topic open in the editor for this purpose. When I start an activity, I simply press F5 to enter the current time as starting time followed by a dash. Then, as I keep working, I add notes on the following lines related to that activity. When I finish, I just position the caret after the dash and press F5 again to enter the End time. Here is a sample entry:

12/28/00 11:22:15 PM — 12/28/00 12:09:19 PM

Worked on the documentation of ShowSize. Added context sensitive help for the options dialog.

Although there are no features for the actual time calculations, I still prefer using it due to the free-format notes that can be attached to the time records with all the convenience of inserting the links to other documents or web sites.

In case you haven’t noticed, you can also add date/time prefixes to the new topic names automatically. See “New Names” page on the Settings–List for a WhizFolder file.

Software development notes

I keep track of bug reports and requests for enhancements in a WhizFolder document.

Things to do
Do Now!
(Other topics here)
Postponed for next version
(Topics here)
Done, need to be documented
(Topics here)

New tasks are added under “Things to do.” Then I select the tasks to do today and drop their hyperlinks in the topic “Do Now!”

As the tasks are finished or postponed, they are dragged and dropped to the Done list or to the Postponed list.

You can use similar ideas for any kind of to-do list. The main advantage of WhizFolders is the easy drag and drop outlining and hyperlinking.

Update, Nov 2015: I have added a kind of source repository feature for developers that is briefly described in the Recent Features list on whizfolders.com (see bottom links). Please watch this blog for more documentation on that new feature. It’s an undocumented feature at the moment.

Experiments in Novel writing with WhizFolders

“It’s perfect. It’s very close to Info Recall with some very nice added functionality. One of the ways I used the other program, which I’ll now do here, is to keep notes on characters in a complex novel. For example, I created the MicroTech Inc. and used it in various chapters. Each time I mentioned a new peripheral character, like a security guard, I’d go to the MicroTech Employees topic, and list that character name, and where s/he appeared. These characters didn’t need a profile, but it’s nice to know that in Chapter 20, when I refer to the security guard again, I know his name. :-)”

“Another example is that my characters either smoke or don’t, or they drink tea or coffee. I have a Coffee & Cigarettes topic, and list each character there by their preferences. Then I put a JumpLink to that topic in each character’s bio. It’s a quick way to know what they drink in the morning, instead of having to wander through a whole profile. After all, they pick each other up spontaneously, and spend the night. This gives me a way to stay consistent without having to lose my train of thought in the midst of a chapter.”

“Finally, I use Jump Links to connect up related characters, rather than having to make long references to family trees, character profiles, and so forth. “Mike” is married to “Kate” and each has their own profiles. The link feature is perfect for joining them, then their kids, and so forth. I can have the McCaffery family as a Topic, but all it contains is named links to each individual family member. Then that topic is the profile, with further links to other relatives and their profiles.”

“I’d suppose that WhizFolders could easily step in as a way to keep track of extended families. :-)”

— Craig Landes

Helping a child master spellings

(applicable to other types of information too)

This post will also give you an idea on how you can use the list coloring and drag & drop features to revise and remember any set of information.

Recently, I had to teach spellings of about 50 words to my child. I used a WhizFolder document for this purpose. Here was the general approach.

  • I first went through the list and found out the words that the child already knew. I added them first, each as a topic name.
  • Then, I took one of the remaining words and taught the child how to break the word into several parts and spell each part. I added each such word to the topic list and colored the topic name “yellow.” I added a note at the top that “yellow” topics were those that the child didn’t know but had had a briefing on.
  • Next day, we revised the yellow words to see how well she got them. I marked the ones that she still had difficulty with in “green” color. To each word’s (topic’s) text, I also added a note on what the difficulty was.
  • This way, each successive day, I could use a different color scheme to narrow down the words till she mastered them all.
  • I also made notes inside the topics themselves on which part of the spelling the child had a difficulty with. Getting her to first remember the mistake before trying next time helped a lot.

Hence, the coloring scheme of WhizFolders can be used to filter or screen any such list of things. Of course, you could do this in a word processor too. But, the advantage here in the topic list is that you could easily drag or move around the words in a “Done” section or a “Difficult” section of the topic list and adding notes or subnotes to an item becomes very easy. You only see as much detail as necessary.

Using OLE features

A new feature now offers the option of inserting an embedded object, rather than an external Jumpfile link. This is done by holding down the Ctrl key when dragging and dropping a file name on the topic editor. A dialog appears allowing you to select the OLE object options. I will describe this dialog in another post. But for the following discussion, assume that I selected “Create from file” and “Link” on the dialog. This way the file stays outside, available to others but its contents are shown by WhizFolders topic viewer or editor.

An OLE (Object Linking and Embedding) object is different from a jumpfile link, in that WhizFolder shows the actual content of the file directly within the topic viewing area. For example, when you drag an MS Word file name (e.g., myfile.doc) from the Explorer to a WhizFolders topic area, the default is to insert a link to that file. Now, holding the Ctrl key during the same operation inserts a representation of the actual content of “myfile.doc” directly into the topic. In this situation, you would have only WhizFolders open, and not the file’s application.

WhizFolders can hold an embedded link, such as this, in the topic area, allowing the underlying and actual file to be modified separately. For example, you might place an embedded object into a topic called “This Year’s Budget.” The object refers to an actual Excel spreadsheet called “thisyear.xls.” Using WhizFolders, you would click on the topic, and the viewing area would show the actual numbers in the spreadsheet. On the other hand, you (or someone else) can open Excel separately, without having WhizFolder open, and make changes to the spreadsheet. Those changes will then be automatically reflected in the WhizFolders topic, the next time you view the “This Year’s Budget” topic.

With this feature you can use WhizFolders as a consolidated “viewer” for many types of different files, gathering them together into an organized project. At the same time, you can create, edit, and format, additional topics within WhizFolders itself. One topic might be text you create directly, whereas another topic might contain a jump link to a Web site. Yet another topic might be a link to a file located on your hard drive (or on a network drive), while a different topic might use an embedded object to show an existing graphic, spreadsheet, document, or other file. Any change to the actual file outside of WhizFolders, is then automatically reflected with the updated information the next time you click on the topic within WhizFolders.

On the basis of a note sent by Craig Landes

List of Bible Books

Here is an interesting file containing a list of Bible books. You can add more topics to this and modify it for your own use. For instance, if you are studying these books, you can add subtopics and start writing your notes on a book.

Download bible.wzfolder (49,074 bytes). After downloading, just open it in WhizFolders Organizer Pro.

Many thanks to Jay Winter for contributing this. I have slightly modified the index using Tables formatted with Microsoft Word.

“I use the program to track contacts, research materials, to-do lists, and its usefulness to me is growing.”

“I am also using the program at work to track all incoming phone calls in a service related environment. Works great at that and for many other things. It’s a super program saving tons of time and allowing my to keep lots of random notes linked together.”

–Jay Winter