Stuff I Love -Feb 12

[shivver13]

I've been a bit lazy about writing here. Well, busy as well, as Gallifrey One's coming up and there's a few last-minute things I need to get done for it. But here's something I love.

Comments

[shivver13]

I just never actually used the notes I took in class for the most part, actually. I might refer to them while doing homework if I needed to see how the teacher explained something, but in general, I did more studying from the book.

I think I used note-taking as a way of re-phrasing what the teacher said in my own words/formulas, to learn like that. I remember very clearly in geography class in college, I was listening to the prof and taking notes on what was important, and I noticed the girl next to me furiously writing. I looked at what she was doing, and she was writing down exactly what the teacher was saying, verbatim, in paragraphs. That made no sense to me. While she was writing (and probably not comprehending because she had to keep up), I was thinking about what the prof was saying and only writing down things as a reminder.

I don't understand how students nowadays can take notes on a laptop. When I was in school, I was constantly writing math and chemical equations, which I'd think would be difficult to do efficiently on a keyboard, and drawing arrows and diagrams, and erasing this bit here, etc. Maybe if I'd been born into it, I'd know how this works now. :)

[dm12]

I studied by rewriting my notes, then outlining them in coordination with the book. I'd keep condensing until I had it down to one page! I also literally cut and pasted in the handouts at the appropriate spots. I found writing by hand helped cement my memory, and condensing it helped me tease out what was really important from the fluff. Did pretty well with that!

As a teacher who has somewhat ambidextrous capabilities, I faced students who took down every word I said and wrote on the black board (chalk days). I filled the whole board, and when my right hand got tired, I erased and started writing with my left. Poor students complained that they couldn't write with both hands. Well, I told them that they didn't need to write everything, just condense it down using their minds to figure it out. After that, I went to typed up transparencies and blew the bulbs on that! I no longer am teaching, but I suppose today, they just use a SmartBoard and print out the notes for the students...

I gave my eldest my handwritten notes for calculus and differential equations when he was taking the courses for engineering; still have my notes for one of my education classes. I'll have to ask him how he did the notes on laptop in such a field. At the time he was in high school, he needed special permission to use it. He is left handed and has difficulty writing in English because it smudges.