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Karl Marx wrote a short summary of every book he read and many scholars and successful people refer to note taking as the secret of their success. I once shared a platform with Richard Branson, where he put his entire business success down to his lifetime habit of taking notes. Apart from being dyslectic, he made the simple point that we forget most of the good ideas we come up with, so taking notes prevents forgetting. He attributed almost all of his business ideas and successes to note taking.
I am also an obsessive note taker and have dozens of black notebooks which have helped me learn and plan over the years. I am often astonished, when speaking to large audiences of learning professionals, how few take notes, when the forgetting curve has been established, since Ebbinghaus in 1885, as one of best known and researched pieces of learning science.
The study has been cited in other peer-reviewed journals more than 1,200 times, according to Google Scholar, and it has been pointed to in op-eds and other popular articles as well. And it fit with the hunches of many “laptop skeptics,” says Michelle D. Miller, a psychology professor at Northern Arizona University, “confirming that people write more and remember less when keyboarding.”
But there’s one problem with the research, Miller points out. When other scholars have repeated the same experiment, they haven’t been able to get the same result.
Via Nik Peachey
It’s long been known that drawing something helps a person remember it. A new study shows that drawing is superior to activities such as reading or writing because it forces the person to process information in multiple ways: visually, kinesthetically, and semantically. Across a series of experiments, researchers found drawing information to be a powerful way to boost memory, increasing recall by nearly double.
How should you take notes in class? Like so many students who came before me and would come after, I had little idea in college and even less in high school. The inherently ambiguous nature of the note-taking task has inspired a variety of methods and systems, few of them as respected as Cornell Notes.
If you haven’t heard of OneNote, it’s time you did. It’s often been described as a “digital 3-ring binder” because it’s a great resource for storing all your digital information. While that is true, it doesn’t capture just how full-featured OneNote has become over the years. When you add the capabilities of Office Lense to the mix, you have a powerful learning framework that can really help simplify teaching in your classroom.
Here are 7 ways OneNote and Office Lense can help you in your classroom.
Back in December I decided that I needed to spend some time giving some of Microsoft's products a good, honest try. I did this to be able to give a more balanced comparison to rival Google products. Some of the Microsoft products I don't like as much as Google's offerings, I still prefer Google Forms. And some of Microsoft's products I like better than the Google equivalent. For example, I now like OneNote more than Google Keep.
Richard Feynman knew his stuff. Had he not, he probably wouldn't have won the Nobel Prize in Physics, let alone his various other prestigious scientific awards. But his reputation for learning all his life long with a special depth and rigor survives him, and in a sense accounts for his fame — of a degree that ensures his stern yet playful face will gaze out from dorm-room posters for generations to come — even more than does his "real" work. Many students of physics still, understandably, want to be like Feynman, but everyone else, even those of us with no interest in physics whatsoever, could also do well to learn from him: not from what he thought about, but from how he thought about it.
There are few things my students hate more than taking notes—and I don’t blame them. Hardly anyone enjoys taking notes. No matter the energy of the teacher or the diligence of the student, it’s extraordinarily easy to lose focus while listening to long, uninterrupted lectures.
Note-taking is easier than writing your essay. But it is more complicated than simply listening to your professor or reading the assigned textbook chapters. So why should you bother?
The idea of note-taking benefits is based on the premise that a student cannot remember every word the lecturer says, no matter how attentive he or she is. It can be helpful for you in the following ways:
* Notes enhance understanding of the material forcing you to paraphrase it;
* Reviewing information commits it to long-term memory;
* It prepares you for constructing better arguments in your academic papers;
* Reviewing the notes helps to score higher results on tests and exams.
Check out these great student- and teacher-friendly note-taking apps.
Organization is a critical academic skill and one that many students struggle with in both the physical and digital worlds. Parents and teachers already help students get organized and now need to extend that to the digital world. Given the influx of technology in their academic lives, students need to develop an effective organizational system for their digital notes, projects and thinking.
Via Nik Peachey
"There are plenty of ways to take notes. You could carry a notebook and pen in your pocket, or scribble thoughts on a napkin at lunch. Or, better yet, you could use a notebook app, so you always have a way to store your thoughts—even if there's not a pen nearby.
"Notebook apps come in all shapes and sizes. From simple plain-text notebooks to apps that recognize your handwriting and record audio, you can find a notebook app for anything you want to remember.
"We took dozens of note-taking apps for a test drive in order to separate the must-try options from the weak ones. First, you’ll find full-featured note-taking apps, including Evernote, OneNote, and Simplenote—the popular notebook apps that can save everything. Then, we'll look at handwriting apps, designed for scribbling your thoughts on tablets.
"And if that's not enough, there's a bonus section at the end with “one-trick ponies”—note-taking apps that do a single job very well, and might be a great companion app for your preferred notebook app."
Via Jim Lerman, Miloš Bajčetić, WebTeachers
The process of writing something down can help you better remember it, so here’s how to get the most out of your notes.
Via Ariana Amorim, Dean J. Fusto
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When the COVID-19 pandemic forced me to move my courses online, I recorded my synchronous online class sessions so students could review them later. However, student feedback and reflection on my course goals revealed collaborative note-taking as an alternative way to provide a record of each class session. My first indication that recording class sessions might be problematic came halfway through the semester. One of my students, a first-generation student, I’ll call Erica, approached me to discuss her performance in the course. I was surprised to hear that Erica felt she was underperforming in class because she was consistently turning in excellent work.
There are many apps to help you record and organize your thoughts on your phone and PC. These are our favorites.
How To Take Cornell Notes Originally published in 2015; updated in October 2018 Form: Cornell Notes Purpose: The purpose of Cornell Notes is to distill complex text, arguments, etc. into a format useful for reflection and study. Sweet Spot: Grades 8-12, college Background: According to Wikipedia, the system was developed in the 1950s by Walter Pauk, a Cornell University professor who shared the technique in his book “How to Study in College.”
Visuals have a strong appeal to our cognitive abilities. Our brains tend to quickly process visually represented information. We also seem to exhibit less difficulties when it comes to remembering visual data which obviously helps in memory recall.That’s why a practice such as visual note taking is an important skill to master. Several studies, as we have argued elsewhere, have shown that ‘visual note-taking such as doodling increases memory retention rates by nearly 30 percent, and opens creative pathways, strengthens focus, and inspires self-expression.’
Online Study Resources
Taking notes in lectures
Learning objectives
This module will help you to:
develop strategies for taking notes in lectures. These are:
- choosing key words, phrases and concepts in lectures to be included in notes
- using basic note-taking symbols and abbreviations
- visually representing the relationship between ideas and the relative importance of information
- review your lecture notes systematically
Taking notes in lectures
Academic writing
Learning objectives
This module will help you to:
- understand some differences between spoken and written language, and the importance of these differences for academic writing
- gain insights into why academic writing is typically abstract and complex. In other words, learn about:
- the influence of Greek and Latin on academic vocabulary
- the predominance of complex noun phrases
- the concept of abstraction and how this is realised grammatically
- understand formal academic style
- learn how opinions and evaluations are expressed in academic writing
In a 2014 article in Psychological Science called “The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard,” Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer claimed that while note taking in itself could be beneficial to student learning, using a laptop proved to be detrimental. A recent article from Scientific American, “Students Are Better Off Without a Laptop in the Classroom,” added fuel to this fire.
There are many tools for creating video-based lessons and quizzes in which students answer the questions that you create for them. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. I've done that myself. However, there are times when I want students to watch an educational video and record notes of their own. Those notes could be questions that they want to ask me or they could be simple notes about an important point made in a video
Visual note taking helps the brain process information in a more effective and sustainable way. It also provides a powerful channel of communication and helps in understanding complex topics. Studies have also shown that ‘Visual note-taking such as doodling increases memory retention rates by nearly 30 percent, and opens creative pathways, strengthens focus, and inspires self-expression.’ As a teacher, you can use the power of visualization to help you with visual mapping of ideas, to showcase interconnections and explain interrelationships.
You probably already take notes when you learn. But often they lie forgotten for weeks or forever. Zipnote makes your notes useful by turning what you learn into reviewable Q&A cards.
Just take your notes in Zipnote! Use our easy, outline-based note format to add concepts, people, places and events you learn about.
Via Nik Peachey
Debates over note taking tend to focus on whether devices are helpful or harmful, rather than on strategies students can use to make connections between ideas
Science has proven that we understand and remember things better when we combine writing and drawing. Discover how sketchnoting unlocks your creative memory!
Despite the arguments for writing notes by hand in class, typing out notes during a lecture has its own unique benefits and advantages. New classroom-centered software is being developed on an almost constant basis, creating opportunities for students to use these new platforms to actively engage with the material they’re learning while the professor is teaching it.
Via Nik Peachey
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