Spiral notebooks experience the following problems:
- They have a finite length. If you run out, you must carry two, but more commonly there is plenty of wasted space at the end.
- They have no modularity. At best you can tear pages out, but that further decreases the capacity and is always messy (leaving a trail of chaff behind either on the paper itself or in a thin strip on the spiral).
- You cannot reorder pages, mix, or match.
- The contents are limited solely to the included notebook paper unless you make a mess of 8.5x11 paper with crumpled edges.
- The potential for organization is greatly increased since anything hole-punched can be included in any location among the loose-leaf paper.
- You can freely add paper as you need and reallocate leftover blank sheets when you are done.
- Pages can be reordered or even rewritten if necessary.
- Papers can be taken out and put back in indefinitely.
- Many binders offer folder pockets, and you can add hole-punched folders to the rings. This adds significant organizational capabilities, potentially becoming an all-in-one solution for managing an individual class’ papers and keeping desk space usage (and fumbling with materials during class!) to a minimum.
- Binders are quite a bit more resistant to being bent than notebooks.
Spiral notebooks can definitely be annoying, and I would never consider using them as my primary storage device. However, I've found that the combination of spiral notebooks and 1.5 inch binders works well for me. I keep my class notes in the spiral notebook, and keep assignments and handouts in the folder part of the binder.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with ring binders is significant though. If you have six classes, you will need to have six different ring binders of at least 2 inch thickness (and even then, inserting paper is hard with one-and-a-half inch rings). Add in four different textbooks you need to bring home every night and if your backpack doesn't literally explode, your back will. If we get tardis-like technology available to the common masses, then yes, ring binders would be the clear choice over spiral notebooks, but until then I'll just make origami out of the chads.
ReplyDeleteAh. I have two solutions for you.
Delete1. For lack of a better word, get floppy binders (aka non-rigid binders.) This will allow you to compress the content in the center, allowing you to fit novel-sized books in the extra space.
2. If you alternate the orientation of the triangles, you can fit six one-inch binders in three inches of thickness, as I do. Works like a charm.
I tend to think of spiral notebooks as simple pointer-based arrays. You can write to any one element, or erase it, but you can't change the size easily, and you can't move a whole section without copying every element, erasing the block, then writing it all back in.
ReplyDeleteBinders are like STL double-linked lists. You can insert or remove at any point easily, or copy a whole block to the same or a different list in constant time, but finding a specific page by index requires iterating through until you find it.
This is what happens when I stay up too late writing code. :P
This is a very interesting perspective on spiral notebooks. I've always accepted them as being slightly inconvenient but not something that I could change. I might get some flexible binders from now on... Thanks for such an eye-opening post!
ReplyDeleteAnother problem with spiral notebooks: the binding gets in the way when you're writing on the left hand page near the spine. At least, it does with me, though I've been told that the way I grip a pencil is really weird. With a binder, you can take a sheet out and lay it on a flat surface.
ReplyDeleteNice solution to the problems that spiral notebooks cause! This year I decided to revamp my note-taking system and use one big 4-subject binder instead of lots of one-subject ones. It worked like a dream until the back cover fell off, and now the back pages keep tearing off :(
ReplyDeleteI also insist on getting the extra-sturdy notebooks that have the reinforced metal rings, because I can't stand it when they get all bent out of shape. Spiral notebooks frustrate me, but that being said, I'm a very disorganized person, so I don't think that I would be able to keep everything together with your loose-paper in a binder method.