How I Learn from Unruled Pages

Bernie Goldbach in LIT-Clonmel | Photo of Digital Moleskine  

I'VE USED UNRULED PAGES for fast and effective mapping of ideas since the early 90s. Those plain blank pages are part of my learning process.

I used simple copybooks for a decade then moved to Moleskines after I spotted dozens of those simple black notebooks on the desks of designers I respected. In late 2008, I started archiving parts of my analogue Moleskines into the digital Evernote system. By listening to the Evernote Blogcasts, I know that Evernote’s main competitor is Moleskine. A lot of people start their ideas on paper first--long before they crank out their first digital slide deck.

I Learn from Unruled Pages

Sometime before the iPhone, when using high-end Sony Ericsson cameraphone optics, I started enjoying the nuanced use of paper notes. I scribble some notes, draw others, and hand over Mindmaps to my artistic four-year-old daughter for her reinking of various boxes and arrows in my Moleskines. Then we have fun together when we use the Sony Xperia in document mode to make high resolution images of Mia Art. There's a generation of learning embedded in these processes.

I'm thinking about learning with blank pages because a recent #edchatie thread prompted people to ask one another, "How do you learn?" I'll answer that call through a series of musings during the next few weeks. I reckon I'll have a coherent answer worth sharing by the 11th of October. And true to form, I'll share some thoughts on my audio blog too.

---

Bernie Goldbach is a fan of journaling.

Hellie on Anseo A Mhúinteoir -- "How I Learn", September 18, 2012.