Taking Notes

As a new semester begins, it might be helpful to suggest that the tech devices we carry can be useful for taking class notes. Here is a recent post on this topic from Edudemic.

My analysis of note taking issues leads me to make a specific recommendation (not necessarily the tried and true Cornell Method identified by Edudemic). I recommend that students use an app that both records audio and allows students to enter their notes. My preference is for SoundNote, but there are other options if you look around.

What the Edudemic identifies as an issue, but does not actually offer a solution for, is the problem of the interaction of the speed of presentation and the speed with which a student can encode information in notes. While keyboarding can be faster than handwriting and this is sometimes a partial solution, the reality is that students sometimes miss things or find that their notes do not make sense. The tech systems I recommend time stamps notes (not necessarily in a visible way) to the audio so that selection of notes can trigger the replay of the corresponding portion of audio. This allows the user to recover from notes that are not of sufficient quality for adequate review.

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