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The Cornell Note Taking System
21–30 of 83 posts
Re: The Cornell Note Taking System
#22The main thing I learned watching these videos is that Cornell students—or Americans more generally, perhaps—hold pens in a way that seems unusual to me. For example, with the thumb wrapped round the pen or with it gripped by the tips of all five fingers. Is that normal in the US? In the UK, I was taught to grip the pen with my thumb and forefinger tips and rest it on my middle finger. Most people I see writing hold…
At least in the NYC public schools in the 80's, we were taught to hold a pen/pencil as you describe.
I remember having one friend who held the writing instrument between his index and middle fingers, the thumb at the tip. Really odd in the way he held it, and every teacher we had for 4 years, at the least, tried to correct him.
I tried holding a pen as in the video, and even just miming, it felt really unnatural.
Re: The Cornell Note Taking System
#23The main thing I learned watching these videos is that Cornell students—or Americans more generally, perhaps—hold pens in a way that seems unusual to me. For example, with the thumb wrapped round the pen or with it gripped by the tips of all five fingers. Is that normal in the US? In the UK, I was taught to grip the pen with my thumb and forefinger tips and rest it on my middle finger. Most people I see writing hold…
The secret is that American school doesn’t really bother itself with that much teaching. Nobody teaches children how to hold pens properly, cursive writing, etc.
Yeah sad but true. I think cursive is still taught for a year or two in elementary school but after that it's not required and most kids just print or develop their own personal blend of printing/cursive handwriting.
I still take notes by hand, on paper, using cursive. I prefer a quality wood pencil and a separate rubber-type eraser for note-taking. For writing text, typing is faster but for note-taking during lectures or presentations I find handwriting more effective, as I can quickly add drawings and arrows and other notation as needed.
Re: The Cornell Note Taking System
#24The rash of "no way" responses makes me wonder: what note taking system(s) have you encountered that actually work for you? (And why, if known.)
From someone who episodically takes notes in haphazard fashion and very rarely looks at them again, and thinks he's probably woefully working harder than he should as a result.
Re: The Cornell Note Taking System
#25You know there's this going where people are starting to realize that extensive/fancy note taking is a gigantic waste of time. The only thing it needs to do is to offload cognitive thinking onto something external while you're learning so you can hold ideas. Most learning comes from recalling, not having beautiful notes.
Re: The Cornell Note Taking System
#26On a personal note, I found any form of notetaking is distraction for me to grasping information... I really don't understand how someone could take good note while also listen... I found this only when I starting my PhD. I hope I know this sooner.
Also, notetaking in any designed system is worse than a blank piece of paper for me. Not sure if any one would agree.
Re: The Cornell Note Taking System
#27Goodness gracious. There is an entire generation of school children (at the very least in my locality) who were forced to use an incredibly poor implementation of this method by teachers who barely understood the intent themselves. On which we were punished for not doing correctly. The biggest gripe I had about this method was that the lessons in middle school and high school never had enough information density to m…
Don’t forget the argument made at the time that this is the way they learn in $OrganizationHeldInHighRegard, so you should do it too!
Re: The Cornell Note Taking System
#28Goodness gracious. There is an entire generation of school children (at the very least in my locality) who were forced to use an incredibly poor implementation of this method by teachers who barely understood the intent themselves. On which we were punished for not doing correctly. The biggest gripe I had about this method was that the lessons in middle school and high school never had enough information density to m…
Were? It still happens. My friend's kids are forced to use such a system now.
Note taking is about the note taker's relationship with the subject so it's idiosyncratic. A potentially useful technique can become a harmful prescription by stupid teachers.
Showing student's lots of techniques and helping them develop there own methods seems more useful.
But it is easier to make a rubric to test stuff like this then help a kid figure out what works.
Re: The Cornell Note Taking System
#29I wish this had been taught week 1 of college when I went in the mid 90s. All college's should have a mandatory module on note taking, learning techniques and general planning and productivity.
Not so sure about mandatory. A system like this is pretty useless unless you’re motivated to use it. How much benefit would the students taking the module only because it’s required really see?
Re: The Cornell Note Taking System
#30The rash of "no way" responses makes me wonder: what note taking system(s) have you encountered that actually work for you? (And why, if known.) From someone who episodically takes notes in haphazard fashion and very rarely looks at them again, and thinks he's probably woefully working harder than he should as a result.
I find for me personally, note taking is a way of forcing me to actively listen. Most of my notes are like yours: haphazard and rarely looked at again.
The two things I do track are specific action items: those get a star in the margin so they can be found quickly and sometimes executives use specific wording they want you to emulate; that gets underlined and then offloaded to a reference document.
I also make sure to be aggressive about giving my notes dates and titles for meetings so I know where/when notes are from.