Friday, February 25, 2011
5 Tips for Effective Digital Note taking
lifehack: "Being a full time student, working two part time jobs, being married, and doing some writing and development on the side proves to be daunting. With my discovery of GTD a few years back I was like everyone else; enamored with the idea of getting things off their mind to then produce better and more effectively. I instantly grabbed onto the practice of “ubiquitous capture” by taking notes so I wouldn’t let as many things fall through the cracks.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
9 comments:
Lifehack time! Let's do this.
This semester has been an interesting one for experimenting with using a computer in classes (like taking notes during Social Psychology) and in production work (on the Project Paperless SM team for A Number). On both fronts, I have (and had) trouble with the second hack here: keeping thoughts concise. The urge with digital notetaking is to copy down everything you hear or read - I'm a faster typist than writer, and I never miss a minute of class, right? The problem is, the notes contain so much extraneous information, of which it's often difficult to even ascertain what is and isn't extraneous. When you're writing, you have to interpret and paraphrase into your own words naturally, but with typing, there's no analysis before court-reporting into the keyboard. The first hack is something I'm going to start doing immediately - listening first, typing later.
Every PTM-Design student has heard the Joe Pino notes lecture, and as everyone knows, hand written notes are the most effective. This article makes some good points though, the most compelling being constant access. Not being able to read my notes when I don't have them can be frustrating. Carrying around all those notes are heavy! However taking handwritten notes and having an effective filing system is good enough for me. Most professors are so against technology in the classroom that it just becomes ineffective.
I have always been a fan of taking notes electronically, but taking them by hand has always worked for me too. As we keep moving into a world of newer technology we will keep changing our opinions, especially on note taking. Technology may have its downfalls but if you can effectively use it, why not?
Having a copy of notes electronically is perfect for me. I can have all my notes in one place wherever I go, and in hard copies if I want. I can back up my notes, print them out easily, and send them to people easily if I need to. You either need to stick to pen and paper, or go electronic.
There are advantages to taking notes by hand, but there are alse cases where we take notes electronically, such as meetings and sending minutes out, that just make more sense. If you have a good system, perfect it, and stick to it, this can make electronic notes very beneficial.
Although taking notes electronically seems probable for future generations, and it is already big for current college students, I find taking notes by hand much more effective. There are some good points here about having electronic notes more available, but when it comes down to retaining information, it is easier to do so when writing notes by hand. There are positives and negatives for both, but I prefer hand writing my notes.
I have Never found Electronic note taking to be effective for me. Handwriting notes seems to make the information take root a little better. that being said i do not practice all 5 of these tips. It is possible that these tips would make electronic note taking more effective, and it is certainly simpler to reorganize information which using computerized note taking methods. when working with a group it is often much simpler to use electronic notes for communication purposes.
The problem i run into with note taking is doing a decent enough job to be able to understand the connections between points that are being made.
I've looked into this for a while now and haven't really found anything short of a full tablet PC using One Note or the Livescribe pen. The Live scribe pen is a really simple and fast way of doing essentially a class "playback" of sorts. You can listen to the lecture and see your notes appear as your wrote them to get more out of them. If i was to switch now, i would only go with either of these two options other wise I'll just stick with my pad and paper.
Call me old fashioned, but I don't like taking notes on the computer. I've done it a few times when I've left my notebook somewhere, but really, I like writing by hand. Not only does it force me to organize and condense what I hear, but actually writing out the words helps me remember things. I am typing right now, and I know the keyboard so well that I barely think about the letters I'm hitting. I also feel more engages when I'm taking notes by hand, and I can draw diagrams and make charts quickly and easily. I also feel like I'm keeping one foot in the past a bit, and as a history/dramaturgy major, I like knowing that the Greats of history also were making their notes by hand.
And also, handwritten notes can easily be scanned into a computer, as I have often done to share notes and have them accessible.
i agree that having your notes available constantly through having them online is very useful. I constantly find that i need a notebook that i dont have on me, and having them online would be so easy. Other than that, I didn't really find this that helpful because its mostly common sense. For me, i cant stay engaged and cant remember info as easily. when taking notes electronically. For Production work, though, i liked it a lot. It made it really easy to do things in real time.
Post a Comment