Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Cornell Notes?

Here's a link to a Cornell Note template - one of the really cool things about it is that one may print very fine grids for graphs etc. Enjoy!

link

I wonder how note-taking should evolve in the digital age. I take handwritten notes during meetings and later type them up. People who can type fast on laptops (I cannot) and who can take them to class (allowed in college, but not in all high schools?) may use them to take notes, although they may need to transcribe diagrams on paper.

I'd rather be given a handout and write notes on that than take notes from scratch, but that depends on the instructor distributing her lecture notes. How do college students take notes nowadays?

Seems like the same old dilemma: forced to follow a regular technique in an irrelevant context and being expected to learn a methodology from doing that. If the challenge isn't there, how will the rote methodology even stick? There should be a rational criteria to when taking notes is appropriate, playing transcriptionist is a poor use of effort.

I still remember my junior year of high school and explaining to the psych teacher (yeah a public hs with a psych class) that I wouldn't be doing the notebook and would accept whatever outcome that has on my grades. But for me, as a likely dysgraphic, transcribing would undermine my active learning.

Maybe he can explore some other note-taking methods that suit him. Social studies has lots of opportunities to see connections between different things, and he could try something like mind-mapping to expound on the material and project other interesting connections or topics he could explore better to support the skeletal (in that he mostly already knows it) content in the class. If writing itself isn't a barrier, he could use that question -> notes technique for a similar outcome.

I knew one person who drew elaborate doodles during lectures and could actually use them to study. While gathered around a table trying to help each other fill in our notes for studying, as we'd all missed something or jotted down concepts in our own words which differed... this person could look at their page of doodles and follow the progression of their filling the page, recalling exact verbiage and inflection of the lecture... filling in many gaps and solving many dilemmas for the study group... while affirming what was correct in each person's notes.

I've often wondered about this doodling in lieu of note-taking, now ZS's post has me thinking that possibly jotting words would have undermined this person's active learning? Fascinating how the brain works, and often provides an option for people to compensate for a possible weakness by leveraging a strength.

LOL, I wonder what said person's doodles might have looked like in Cornell format?