Pen Still Mightier Than the Laptop For Notetaking? 569
theodp writes "While waiting to see if the iPad is a game-changer, this CS student continues to take class notes with pen and paper while her fellow students embrace netbooks and notebooks. Why? In addition to finding the act of writing helps cement the lecture material in her mind, there's also the problem of keeping up with the professor: '[While taking notes on a laptop] every five minutes I found myself cursing at not being able to copy the diagram on the board.' So, when it comes to education or business, do you take notes on a notepad/netbook, or stick with good old-fashioned handwriting? Got any tips for making the transition, or arguments for staying the course?"
Re:Notes (Score:5, Interesting)
Mix them (Score:2, Interesting)
Pen and paper for diagrams.
Notebook/netbook for plain text.
Convert your hand-drawn diagrams later, using a scanner or re-draw using a graphics tablet after class.
Notebooks + paper are the key (Score:4, Interesting)
Pulse Pen (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Notes (Score:3, Interesting)
short hand + paper/pen notetaking (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been out of a college class for a few years, but I simply would and still prefer paper/pen. It's not about being old school, but I am extremely picky about what I want technology doing for me. I tend to be uncompromising and really think out what some input device will do for me. I want technology that works the way I do, not me having to compromise heavily in order to use it. I have yet to see something that fits the flexibility of pen/paper while giving me the advantage of a digital device thought those electronic note taking pens are probably close.
I can tell you me typing for an hour on a netbook would lead to uncomfortable typing, as netbooks have too small a size. I could probably swing a regular sized laptop like my 15" Macbook Pro, or other similar full size key laptop.
I also have my own short hand method of note taking, coupled with identifying things that I don't need to memorize and things that have to be written down. Also I tend to circle important bits of information and tie them together with arrows pointing to what they relate to creating a type of cluster diagram meshed in with regular note taking. I don't see how any laptop software out there can compare there.
I am hopeful that a well thought out, well implemented tablet PC comes along that gives me good flexibility.
That said I can imagine taking my ipod touch or other such small form tablet device and scribble or look up some info on it while I take notes with pen/paper. As I was thinking about this I considered an iPhone or other similar device being indispensable, since you can take a photo of the board if there is a complex diagram, and simply drop a note on paper (see iPhone pict for blah diagram). ;-)
Re:Pulse Pen (Score:2, Interesting)
The dangers of distraction... (Score:5, Interesting)
This seems like the optimal division of time and one that keeps classroom discussions relevant. It also means that not having laptops and cell phones can actually make for a better overall experience.
Re:Notes (Score:1, Interesting)
the best way, IMHO (Score:3, Interesting)
I take the notes with a pen and paper and also record everything with a voice recorder. Since I'm taking mostly math courses, it works out quite well. I focus on writing the formula with annotations, and then when the lecture is over, I reconstruct the whole thing. The annotations help to connect the voice recording and my scribbles. That takes some extra time, of course, but the end result is detailed lecture, with everything on a blackboard carefully reconstructed. As a last shot, I typeset the whole thing in LaTeX (if I have time).
I think, if you start using computer (tablet or whatever), you won't have the ``instant connection to the recording media" that pen and paper provide.
As a side note, my favorite professor normally creates some handwritten outline of the lecture, but all the proofs and staff he does on the fly. By accident, while talking to him, I've mentioned I have recorded and typeset his lectures. He looked at them and liked them so much he asked me if he can use them as a supplementary material for his course(s). I didn't mind at all, of course.
Penmanship... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Pencil. (Score:5, Interesting)
But with a real tablet computer and a stylus (e.g. Lenovo x-series tablets), in addition to erasing you also get a pencil that can cut & paste, resize, move, add space in the middle of the page, highlight, color, change the color of already written text, and annotate pdfs (in case the lecturer hands out slides in pdf format), and undo.
It's called Xournal [sourceforge.net]. I frakking love it. Completely changed the way I work. Now I don't have to carry a backpack full of printed articles.
I also use Zotero [zotero.org]. It's a bibliographic database add-on for firefox, and it will store full-text pdf's. If you set up xournal as your default pdf viewer, you can annotate and store the annotations for papers. So I no longer carry any printed paper or notes anymore.
If you're in science or engineering and deal in diagrams, equations, and journal articles, this beats the crap out of paper & pencil.
I hope to see more real tablet computers this year. Everyone has decided to stop manufacturing tablets with high-resolution screens, and use wide screens too, which means in portrait mode your tablet is blocky (can't read subscripts of equations) and too tall (because it's 16:10 rather than 4:3). So while the iPad sucks on all the above points, I hope it spurs some new & interesting tablets this year. Pen input (wacom) also needs improvement, especially near the edges of the screens where precision is lost.
Re:At Law School... (Score:3, Interesting)
End result, you may very well have gotten more information total, but it's far less likely to be the information you need. Additionally, you've just pissed off the people in the lecture that are more respectful of their classmates. I paid for the class, I don't see why I should suffer so that somebody else can type during my class time. There's also the bit where a huge number of specialties actually require some degree of drawing. Even in law classes, there's sure to be times when a neatly drawn diagram can better explain what's going on than a large amount of text.
Laptops are just fine (Score:2, Interesting)
Pen and paper, all the way! (Score:3, Interesting)
The best datum I can offer is a course I took a few years ago on error control coding.
Each week the prof got somebody to volunteer to take very good notes, type them up in LaTeX, then he would distribute them to the rest of the class for reference. The "scribe", as he called the role, got extra credit. The week I volunteered to be scribe it took 8 hours to turn 2 hours of lectures in to something presentable and machine-readable. This included 28 diagrams in Xfig, plus numerous equations.
I started a night school course last week (private pilot ground school, if you're curious). My notes are by hand, plus some highlighter work in the textbooks. I haven't the slightest interest in transcribing them. Why would I? They're my notes, written by me.
Old-tech really is the best tech some times.
...laura
more useful for recopying notes to digital form (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm a big fan re-writing notes, it forces you to re-examine the stuff that didn't totally sink in
during lecture. Rewriting them in digital form makes it that much more portable, cleaner, and
you can bring your friends up to speed faster. Engineering notebooks (wire bound) plus a good
mechanical pencil was what I settled while I was an engineering student. Couple re-writing
the notes in digital form with a audio recording of the lecture and you're golden. Alternatively,
you can scan your notes in and then annotate them.
Tablet computers were always good for homework.
Re:Notes? (Score:2, Interesting)
This is my experience teach collage calculus and statistics...
In my experience, students learn through the tips of their pencils. Taking notes keeps the students involved and paying attention. The semesters that I've had horrible classrooms and have had to do the lecture from slides and post the notes... my students seem to do worse because they can't pay attention during the lecture. Some students do great and they are right there with me, but a substantial portion of the middle of the class isn't paying close enough attention.
It isn't that I'm too lazy to make good slides... it that my students tend to do better when I do everything at the chalk board.
Pen Still Mightier Than the Laptop For Notetaking (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:N800 vs. Palm PDA (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Are you guys mad? (Score:5, Interesting)
I hate to say this on Slashdot... but have you tried.. : gulp : Microsoft Word? At least on the Mac version, it has this great feature... It records audio while you're taking notes, and next to every line of notes is a little speaker icon. If you click the speaker icon, it starts playing starting at the point you added that line of notes. It's great for just writing down the basic concepts, and then jumping through the audio to get the detailed lecture.
Re:Notes (Score:2, Interesting)
In some parts of Europe all writing is (or at least was) in fountain pen. In some parts of North America, most students never see a fountain pen, yet alone use it.
And the way students are taught is different as well. In Europe(at least some parts), first students learn to hand-write, then print, the opposite happens in North America. Recently (in some parts of North America)there has been talk about hand-writing being phased out.
Re:Why do we even take notes? (Score:4, Interesting)
I have never had a student pass without regular attendance. I've taught at three public universities, two private colleges and physics at one public community college (so I think my student demographic has been quite diverse).
I did not REQUIRE attendance to pass, nor link grades/points to attendance in any, way shape or form. Scores/final grades were 100% performance based.
I only rarely lectured on material not in the text book, though I often presented the material differently than the text presentation.
As I told my students on the first day, "I don't care if you learn it from me, the book, your room mate or who ever, if you can do the work, you'll pass."
Generally, the people who did not attend regularly scored in the teens on the tests, or even single digits, on the tests.
Tablet PC (Score:1, Interesting)
I'm surprised no one has mentioned the proper tablet PC option. I'm in 3rd year EEng and there's about 15-20 people in my classes (myself included) that use tablet PCs.
I bought a 5 year old motion M1300 off ebay for about $300 and it works great for note taking. I'm using OneNote 2007 and have no problems with speed. There is no way I could type in graphs and equations fast enough but writing on the tablet using a proper stylus is just as easy as writing on paper. Plus my notes are way better organized now since I can re-order and index pages.
I don't see the I-pad being any sort of competitor to these devices. Most people use either a cheap HP convertible tablet or a Lenovo X-series tablet. All the tablet computers use some sort of wacom tablet built into the screen. I very much doublt that capacitive touch could work for handwriting, even If you had a proper stylus.
Most teachers have powerpoint slides online and I just drop them into my notes and take notes on top of them. It's the best of both worlds because I don't need to print out the slides but I can still write on them.
TabletPC and 1 year w/o paper (Score:2, Interesting)
I got a hold of a Tablet PC during my Junior year of my CS degree, just in time for my advanced Algorithms class.
Fun. Lots and lots of fun. Thanks to OneNote I didn't have to touch paper for an entire year. I did everything in OneNote, including homework, which was exported and emailed into my profs.
OneNote syncs up notes with audio recordings taken during lectures/meetings/etc, and my Tablet had a 3d Mic Array, which means it had (IIRC) 3 microphones spread out around it and I could tell the software which direction to emphasis recording from.
The model was a Toshiba M200, 12" screen long before the current trend of smaller laptops was in style. Everyone was lugging around their 15" monster laptop that had an hour or so battery life, at the start of each lecture they would rush to the power outlets so that they could feed their machine. My 3hr battery life lasted me through an entire day of lectures.
Studies have shown [citation needed] that the physical act of writing notes helps with both comprehension and recall. I have always hated taking notes out, my fine motor skills are horrible and I writing hurts my writes like hell, but the benefits were so obvious that I continued to do so anyway.
The only problem with laptops in classrooms is that I tended to post a lot on /. during boring lectures...
Re:At My University (Score:3, Interesting)
Whereas math and physics, where people take copious notes, are all about rote memorization? I don't think so.
If you don't need to take notes, you aren't being challenged enough.
Re:Missed market (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:At My University (Score:3, Interesting)
Whereas math and physics, where people take copious notes, are all about rote memorization? I don't think so.
If you don't need to take notes, you aren't being challenged enough.
For physics and mathematics at a reasonably high level (late undergraduate to graduate level courses), assuming you have decent course literature, it makes no sense at all to take notes. The equations and derivations are generally so complicated that both copying them and really listening to what the lecturer is saying is not really an option.
At least for me, I feel I learn faster from devoting my attention towards trying to follow the arguments of the lecturer instead of taking down notes.
Re:Notes (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Notes (Score:3, Interesting)
Then you've been using shitty fountain pens.
Agreed. Fountain pens require some maintenance, but they are the best for note taking. You need to make sure you get a low maintenance, sturdy pen for that task though: steel nib, large ink reservoir, and preferably a light metal body construction for durability.
I personally use the Lamy Safari or Al Star for all my note taking. They are cheap and can be dropped or run them over with car tires and they keep on writing smoothly. And if you do lose them, they are relatively cheap.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Notes (Score:1, Interesting)
If you are left-handed fountain pens are less great. They place more ink on paper than ballpoint pens, which means it's not dry when and you sweep it with your hand. You have to learn to write in a slightly awkward position.
Re:Notes (Score:3, Interesting)
I use the Pilot Varsity line of DISPOSABLE fountain pens.
Of perhaps 40 used up so far, only one had a problem. The ink doesn't dry out and they write nicely.
Plus, you can lose them without a fuss, share them with people (hint: chicks dig neat pens).
They used to be available retail for about $1 each in three packs (black, blue, purple) but now I can only find them for about twice that on Amazon.com.
Even at twice the price, they are good pens.
Re: Notes (Score:1, Interesting)
I like fountain pens, and have some nice ones, but even the really good ones aren't as reliable (or as long lasting) as a decent ballpoint pen.
If I was taking notes in a class, however, where I could have everything set up nicely and would write for a long time, I would prefer fountain pens. A decent one (e.g. Pilot 78G) can be reliable and work very nicely. But you have to recalibrate what you think is a lot to pay for a pen (I never paid more than $10 for a pen before FPs). Some of the better gel pens can work nicely with a light grip, FWIW.
I do like my fountain pens, but they do have issues and there is a trade off, but if your hand ever hurts from note taking, if you find yourself pressing hard on paper, you should try a fountain pen and look up how to write correctly. A decent one will let you barely touch the paper and have a light grip. Just avoid the ones at Office Depot, and for class note taking, get a fine or extra fine nib.