Unclutter posted an article about using a laptop to take notes at college. I tend to disagree. It is hard to beat a pen and paper for taking notes. One thing that is commonly overlooked is how different tools exercise your mind. When you work on the computer it uses substantially different parts of your brain than when you write with pen and paper. (I don’t know what happens if you use a typewriter.) Since so much research and writing papers is done on the computer, taking notes by hand allow you to interact with the content in as many different parts of the brain as possible. What do you think? Is a laptop an effective way to take notes in a classroom?
As an undergrad I would hand write all my notes, it worked fine, but at that point I didn’t know how good I could have it.
For my 3 years of law school I typed everything. I never realized how much I was missing by not being able to type. When typing I could get down most, if not all, of what the professor said as well as add in notes from my own thoughts. My own thoughts never made it into my handwritten notes even when using shorthand.
I do, however, agree that you don’t learn as well when typing notes. I found that I had to go over my notes again and reduce them into an outline to retain most of the lectures.
Pen or pencil and paper all the way.
Taking notes is dangerous. It’s possible to take notes too thoroughly and miss the message. Typing notes into a laptop could result in taking down every word. That’s not what notes are for.
With pen and paper you can easily take a FEW notes of key words or ideas and organize them with arrows, bubbles, dotted lines, boxes or indentations.
You can go back and squeeze something in the margin. You can write sideways. You can draw pictures.
A laptop has many other uses in collegiate and everyday life but scritching notes in a notebook is still my favorite way of attending lectures.
Plus, notebooks from long ago are treasures. I have my calligraphy phase, my printing phase, my brown ink phase … and the stuff I wrote down still makes me smile.
While I was in college, I actually did both. I took pen-and-paper notes in class itself, and then typed everything into my computer on the weekend. During class, this allowed me to free-flow my notes and not worry about whether they looked pretty. On the weekends, it allowed me to review what I’d covered in class that week as well as edit my notes into something more structured and visually pleasing. At the end of semester, I barely had to study: just re-reading my notes was often enough. I credit this method to being one of the key factors to my straight-A GPA.
I am going to college this fall and I was thinking of doing your idea in reverse. The laptop would be my in class note-taking component. Then I would go and write everything in a notebook. This would give me the typing speed and neatness of the computer, but also makes me write down important information, putting it to memory and having a paper copy so I won’t have to run off all my notes, wasting ink.
I know that a laptop would be a huge hindrance for me because I am a science/teaching major. It is easier to handwrite the diagrams and equations I have to quickly copy. If I were an English major, I could see a laptop being more useful.
I tend to agree that nothing beats paper and pen *in class* (unless you are hyper-proficient with good note-taking software) but I would recommend that most students type up their notes after class. Writing is good for the memory, and also makes it easier to connect things when the teacher goes back and adds to point 2 after point 19. But typing up a) makes searchable, b) reinforces memory, 3) makes archiving and sharing easier, d) makes notes neater, and e) allows filtering and reorganization.
Some profs ban laptops due to the ability of students to get on the Internet.
It can be more effective for people who do not want to waste time typing up their notes again.
However I find that retyping up my notes forces me to actually read, revise and re-organise my notes. If something I’ve written (probably in a hurry) doesn’t make sense, then I KNOW and I figure it out before typing it up.
Often, I think we’re too focused on writing/typing as much important points as possible from lecturers that we don’t have time to really LISTEN and absorb what they are trying to say.
The answer, of course, is simple: a tablet PC plus decent note-taking software (e.g. OneNote) would be ideal.
You get the interactivity of working with pen and…er, screen, plus potentially the ability to record lectures, while maintaining the advantages of electronic storage of information.
I’m far from college age any more (grrrrrr), but certainly agree with your position. In the business world, an open laptop in a meeting is a sure sign of someone disengaged. The laptop user is either working on something else (browsing randomly), or concentrating on their input mechanism (Word, Evernote) more than the discussion at hand.
I’m a few years past college now, but it’s a lot easier for me to take notes on paper, and then type a summary or action items into the computer.
Awfully hard to sketch an idea into a typical word-processing package.
I think it comes down to how comfortable you are with either method. My handwriting has always been pretty poor and note taking brings out my worst habits. Some of us will be in a similar situation with keyboards due to lack of training in touch typing or injury.
I did change the way I take notes by switching to mindmaps of the main points. I found I could also replicate this using Freemind on a laptop.
Really small UMPC like Samsung Q1Ultra (I have one) is far more convenient that any paper solution. It definitely worth to learn fast typing and with a stylus and touch screen you can make drawings or any other hard to type notes.
I prefer pen and paper for note taking _because_ it is slower, and forces me to actually think about what I am listening to, what is important, and what questions I might have. Otherwise (lazy me) I turn into a mindless scribe. In fact, when attending meetings or presentations that I am required to attend but which do not directly impact my work, I force myself to take notes because that forces me to pay attention.
H.
Personally… I could never pay attention to the lecture when the computer was in front of me. I had to leave my laptop at home and pull out that old fashioned pen and paper.
The few times I took notes with a keyboard (one that attached to my PDA) I was really self conscious about the noise it made. Irritated glances in my direction made me even more aware. A classroom full of clacking keyboards would drive me nuts!
I also think there’s something about moving a pen across paper that helps me remember a lecture better, even if I never go back and read the notes.
I think the differences in opinions may boil down to why you take notes. When I take notes (and I took notes for very few of my undergrad classes), I’m doing it to better interact with the information. My goal usually isn’t to try to capture every piece of data because it is probably written down in my book. Instead I’m trying to use the paper and pen to help me visualize and use the information in new ways.
I find that this is much more difficult to do with a computer.
I think tablet PC may be better than laptop. On tablet PC one can actually write, and then it is saved on a computer, can be searched/edited/re-arranged easily, not something you can do with hand written notes in a notebook.
Personally, I can’t take note fast enough on a laptop, so I prefer pen and paper.
I think it’s hard to beat pen & paper when it comes to info. capture. As much as I love tech and gadgets, I think they very much get in the way of information capturing. Tech and gadgets can be helpful at organizing and reminding, but I find that even in those areas it still takes more time to set up than using pen & paper methods. You just have to weigh if what info. you are trying to retain or appointments/ reminders you are using the tech. gadgets for is worth that time investment to set it up.
But I think if you *REALLY* want to retain some info. and/or learn something that was presented to you, I find if you take your pen & paper notes and then go back after and make a structured outline from them, you’ll get *much* more retention either way. I would think that this obvious benefit would be mostly from the reprocessing of the information more so than a benefit inherent in either of the methods of capturing. When I take my notes, I’m scribbling the ideas down, line by line. I’m not distracting myself thinking about any outline format for it (Ex.: Should I sub list these?) or even concentrating so much on spelling. I’m just getting it down so I can be as engaged as possible in the meeting/seminar to get the most out of it. THEN I’ll go back later and then refine into an outline.
In the end, I prefer the least intrusive method for capturing, whether it is for meeting/seminar notes or daily GTD capture stuff. For me that’s *easily* pen and paper. Boot/loading times, OS/menu navigation, and keyboards/touchpads/etc. are just incredibly annoying hurdles to me when it comes to quick capture. My “boot time” for my devices is as quick as I can click my pen and tug the bookmark on my pocket Moleskine weekly calendar/diary. I haven’t seen any tech gadget yet that makes it simpler than that, giving me the least distraction from I’m trying to capture.
Actually, I’ll admit, there’s one tech gadget: a pocket digital recorder (like a microcassette recorder). I try to use that whenever possible so that I can minimize the notes I take to only write down the most essential ideas (and keep my mind from wandering) and yet I won’t be frantically trying to write down *everything*. Obvious side benefit: being able to have the whole thing in an audio file I can download & archive on my computer, and refer back to if I ever need to.
Anthony B.
Do you know about Jott.com? It’s a very handy service that allows you to phone in your notes which you then receive as an email. I used to use a pocket recorder, but would get backed up when it came to getting the notes out of the recorder and down onto paper or into the computer. Jott is a one step solution.
Using multicolor pens and paper is the most efficient method of taking class notes that I have found.
I. Make your notes brief.
a. Never use a sentence where you can use a phrase. Never use a phrase where you can use a word.
b. Use abbreviations and symbols, but be consistent.
II. Take notes in your own words. However, the following should be noted exactly:
a. Formulas
b. Definitions
c. Specific facts
III. Use outline form
IV. d. use different color pens for different ideas, etc.
V. If you miss a statement, write key words, skip a few spaces, and get the information later.
VI. Don’t try to use every space on the page. I leave 2 –3 inches on the right hand side and 2 inches of margin on the bottom.
VII. Date your notes.
VIII. Review the note as soon as possible and generate a mindmap.
IX. Use a digital voice recorder if possible to capture all discussions., helps you fill in the blanks latter.
X. If allowed use a digital camera or camera phone to getting formula drawing etc. use the free http://www.qipit.com service that converts phone pictures to pdf documents.
Do not waste your time redoing your notes. Take them correctly the first time.