You have two, and they do different jobs
| Field Notebook (paper) | Class Notebook (Google Doc) |
|---|---|
| Handed to you at the start of class. It is on the desk before your laptop is open. | You make it once, in Block 1, and it lasts all year. |
| Bell ringers. Sketches. Anything you need to get down fast or draw rather than type. | Power Notes from videos and readings, and the entry header that indexes the year. |
The split is about speed and about pencils. A bell ringer runs while attendance happens, before machines are open. A sketch cannot be typed. Everything else is better typed, because typed work can be searched.
- One Class Notebook for the whole course, all year. Not one per unit.
- Every entry opens with the same header line: date, block, entry title.
- The site gives you the entry title. You never invent one.
- The index at the top stays current, because Docs builds it for you.
A notebook that fragments cannot be searched. That is the whole reason for the rules: in April you will want something you wrote in September, and you will find it in about five seconds if the entry titles are consistent and about five minutes if they are not.
This is why every block still gets a typed entry header, even on days when most of your work was on paper. The header is what puts the block in your index. Under it, write one line saying which Field Notebook pages belong to that block. The paper holds the sketch; the Doc knows where the sketch is.
1. Set it up
The Field Notebook needs no setup. It is handed to you at the start of class; write your name on the front and date every page you use.
The Class Notebook takes ten minutes in Block 1. You do this once.
- Create a Google Doc named Class Notebook - [your name] - E&ES.
- Put it in your class Drive folder.
- Share it with Ms. Jayanthi/Mr. Ignash, edit access, once. That is the only time you hand anything over. There is no submitting after this.
- Turn on View, Show outline. Leave it on. It is how you move around a document that will run to a hundred entries.
Sharing once means the notebook is checked, not collected. It is not graded, and you never lose access to it while it is being read. It also means your teacher can see it at any time, so write it as work you are willing to have read.
2. The header line
Every entry opens with one line, in this order: date, block, entry title.
Style that line as Heading 2. That is not decoration. Docs builds the index out of your Heading 2s, so a header line styled as normal text is an entry that never appears in your index and that you will not find again.
A and B rotations meet on different days, so every block page shows you both dates. Take yours.
The Do section of every block page prints the exact header line for that day. Copy it. This is what makes the whole system work: every notebook in the room says the same thing in the same order, so mine takes ten seconds to check and yours is searchable by a phrase you did not have to remember inventing.
3. The index
At the very top of the doc, above your first entry: Insert, Table of contents, and pick the version with links.
That is the whole job. It updates itself from your Heading 2s, so there is no column to rule and no page number to write. If an entry is missing from it, the header line was not styled as Heading 2.
4. Working in it
- Never delete an entry. If something is wrong, write the correction underneath it. The record of you changing your mind is worth more than a tidy page, and in this course you will be asked to show that change more than once.
- One block, one entry. Everything you type for a block sits under that block's header line. Your bell ringer and your sketches are on paper, so the entry carries a line saying which Field Notebook pages go with it.
- Date every Field Notebook page. It has no index of its own. The date is the only thing that lets you match a page back to an entry in the Doc.
- Working offline. Turn on offline access for the doc (in Drive, the three-dot menu, Available offline). If the wifi drops mid-lesson you keep typing and it syncs later. A dropped connection should not cost you an entry.
5. Three ways to hold the body of an entry
The rule is narrow and it is the same one every time: the header line is always typed, as Heading 2. What sits under it can be typed, drawn, or spoken.
- Typed, straight into the Doc. The default, and the only one that is searchable.
- On paper, in your Field Notebook. Type the header, then one line underneath saying which pages.
- Recorded, if you take notes by ear. Record into the Notebook audio subfolder in your class Drive folder, type the header, and paste the link underneath.
All three keep you in the index exactly like everyone else. An entry that never gets a typed header is an entry you cannot find, whatever form the body took, and that is the one outcome this whole page exists to prevent.
6. What goes somewhere else
- End-of-block reflections go in the Reflection Journal tool, which you reach from Google Classroom. Not here. See How This Class Works.
- Graded work goes to Google Classroom.
- The Unit 3 engineering journal is its own separate artifact with its own format. It is not part of this notebook.
What is left is the year's thinking, split across the two: Power Notes typed in the Class Notebook, bell ringers and sketches on paper in the Field Notebook, and a header line in the Doc for every block so all of it stays findable. How to make those notes worth keeping is a different question, and it is answered at Notetaking & Notemaking.
7. If you join partway through the year
Start at the block you arrive on. Set the doc up the same way and copy the header lines from that day forward. You do not need to backfill and you are not behind.