This is our first time where we are really spending a lot of time in our notebook, and this is also our first year in V5, so I was wondering if there is anything we should add to our notebook
@lacsap has definitely provided great resources to start with for your engineering notebook. You could also look at YouTube videos of notebook explanations and take inspiration from that.
Here’s a link of some advanced engineering notebook techniques: https://vrc-kb.recf.org/hc/en-us/articles/9662058169495-Advanced-Engineering-Notebook-Techniques . Here, you can get the idea of the difference between what a beginner’s versus an expert’s notebook looks like.
Your title suggests that you are doing the notebook digitally. @lacsap , as I mentioned, posted great links of example templates that you can use and view.
Good luck this season!
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It’s not a bad start, but one thing that I would recommend is explaining how your pages (or in your case, slides) will be formatted using organization. This can help increase readability for the judges (and anyone else reading the notebook) and it can help your team keep your notes organized.
If you’re interested, I could maybe take screenshots of some pages that I consider important from my notebook (I wish I could post a link to the entire thing but it’s from my school account and it probably can’t be viewed from people outside of my school district). But like I said, it really isn’t a bad start, but what I suggested might be a good idea to take into consideration.
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One of the best is 515R video on their notebook process.
Also check out notebooking.ReCF.org for tips on getting started.
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Could you post those screenshots? Thanks!
Sure thing! Here are some important pages from my notebook that I think you should take into consideration for your notebook. I can always take more screenshots if you want to see examples of anything else.
So you’re going to want to mention how your notebook will be formatted, scoring details and a map of the field, and maybe use calendars to organize progress over months. I ended up editing a few pages (remember to always date entries and whenever you make changes to them).
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Thanks! This helped a lot
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No problem! If you want to use these ideas, you can cite us in your notebook as team 9457Z.
Good luck with this season, and happy notebooking!
Everyone talks of “digital Notebook” from VEX, but that has been traditionally “presentation”, which is hard to work with as a “Team”. Google Docs is great, and I’ve created a template (and willing to share). Allocate one per team and then permit Team members as “Commenter”, which then creates an automatic audit log on your document. The Table of contents is also automatically refreshed (with mouse click).
I would very strongly suggest a new Team title; “Program Manager”. This person keeps track of the Engineering Log activity, makes sure people are writing. Could also be accountable for over Product Test validation. (This person also called “Boss”).
Doc has concurrent access, so 7x24 updating possible. Provides “Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, and Durability”. If *.odt imported on school Google domain, very secure. Data capture through camera, audio-2-text, screen capture… So, lots of reasons to enable Docs… Paul
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How about sharing it, and let teams figure out what works best for them.
Hard to evaluate without seeing 
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This is really good advice. Can I see your template please?
I want to make sure I get feedback and opinions, so I can improve in the future. Please send your e-mail to [removed by moderation] I’ll send along, as I did with Pascal… Once posted here, I have to just walk away from it… Thanks. Paul
PS, a little pontification, especially for elementary and middle. First tasks: 1) Each Team member presents a formula-like (simple list of values) for the maximum points that can be achieved. Highest value (confirmed) gets a reward (e.g., $5). This gets each Team member to READ the competition book and learn the objectives. 2) Do time-and-motion study. “How much time would you allocate for each of the values listed”. To live in 1:00 min., they will have to make trade-offs. 3) Define assemblies, and allocate ownership. Someone gets lifter, shooter, transport, dumper, etc. 4) each owner has to lead a brainstorming session for possible solutions (some might be pre-built) to meet the requirements… All this SHOULD be dumped into the Notebook…
A post in this thread was edited by moderators to remove personal contact information.
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To Jpearman, how can I share something with one person on the chain? I want to track who gets something I send, and when I post, I lose all control… Further, the file type for “Google Docs” is “*.odt”, which is not permitted to be uploaded.
I don’t have a good solution for that. For several years moderators have been asked to remove personal contact information (email, phone numbers, addresses etc.) from posts (not everything is caught and we tend to occasionally allow discord usernames through). Some posts with contact info get rejected, some are edited as I did above. In the past it was recommended to use direct messaging, but that has not been possible since changes were made to the forum last year.
“odt” is, I believe, open document format. google docs allows exporting in several other formats including pdf.
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i think you could make a copy of it, then set the permissions so that people who click on the link have editor or viewer
Most of this forum is about what’s in a Workbook; I contend the base template could be SO much more professional (speaking from decades of experience).
It is impossible to easily share by sending, and I can’t even upload a Google Docs (wrong file-extension), so here’s a printed output of VR5 instructions for using.
VRC-2023-24 Digital Over Under Notebook-Instructions (in DOC format) - Google Docs.pdf (2.5 MB)
This is the PDF print, which has the instructions (adding to the template). The Team member comments, with attribution and time. Input with Cut/Paste (since this is digital) and microphone transcription, ToC gets updated with 2 clicks. Dot-decimal organization, as it typical in documents (though it feels like it splits into planning/assembly creation/final assembly sections). Cross referencing works and indexing possible. This is VERY close to a community Microsoft Word product.
The JPEG is what is seen on the screen. Google doesn’t yet print attribution, only visible digitally. it DOES effectively support concurrent updates (ACID test), so ALWAYS available to the Team for input. This is a compendium to the true template file. Each team gets a unique Docs copy, so Team documents are also quite isolated.
There is an equivalent file set up for this years VIQC.