Noteworthy

Summary 

Pen or computer? 

The BBC article "When the best way to take notes is by hand" reports that, because they are more likely to compress it into their own words rather than copying exactly, students who write notes by hand rather than by typing on a computer gain a deeper understanding of the concepts in lectures, although there is no particular benefit either way when it comes to taking notes to record simple factual material. Other research reported suggests that it does not matter whether a lecture is recorded to watch again later, which apparently frees students to concentrate more deeply, although a surprizing result was that knowing the lecture was being recorded actually correlates with more note taking than usual.

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Response 

When I saw the article on the BBC website as I was having my morning coffee a few days ago, it immediately interested me because taking notes is an important skill for both the reading and writing parts of the IELTS test. That relevance to what we do when we write a summary in addition to the summarizing questions that often occur in the reading part of the test also suggested the title I chose for this blog post. And if you are a student, you probably have to take notes all the time. Note taking is also a useful skill in meetings and elsewhere. In the notes on the summarizing process that I prepared, that is also why I emphasize step 2 — be sure you understand your chosen source, in which taking notes is an important part. I was not surprised that the study showed that making the effort to take notes in your own words improved understanding of the concepts in the lecture or other material much more than simply copying exact words. Anyone can copy words without understanding them, but if you have to express ideas in your own words, you must also understand them well. 

But when I got to the end of the article, I was a little disappointed that it had not mentioned my favourtie note taking tool: Microsoft's OneNote, which I use all the time, both typing and writing with a pen on my laptop or tablet, and which seems to me to offer the best of both pen and computer. Except for a few situations in class, I don't normally write on paper there days, but I do like to write with a pen on my laptop and tablet, and less often on my phone. I usually do my brainstorming on a computer these days. That seems to me to have all the benefits of a pen on paper, with added advantages such as not losing bits of paper, being able to easily mix hand-written notes with typed text, and also paste in images if I want to. I can even add sound files and things, although I don't often do that. I would like to have seen a study comparing the results of taking notes by hand on paper and on a computer using a program like OneNote. 

Unfortunately, my handwriting has deteriorated a bit over the years as I write less and less, and type more and more, which might sometimes annoy my students when I scribble to on the whiteboard. 
 

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Question

When do you take few notes and many notes?