A Learning Secret: Don't Take Notes with a Laptop (2014) • Hacker News Board

Re: A Learning Secret: Don't Take Notes with a Laptop (2014)

#171

Post by veddox » Tue, Jun 25, 2019, 1:32 PM UTC

yial wrote: post #8

I frequently still use notepads for notes, I find it actually helps me retain information. Additionally, when reviewing shortly after a meeting, I find that I can better suss out the truly important action items. Especially if things need to be delegated. This isn’t to say I never take notes on my computer. (Notepad++ is wonderful for this), but I find the physical note taking to be incredibly beneficial for organiza…

> Additionally, there may still be a certain social impact where people feel that you’re “paying attention” when taking notes on a physical pad, vs they feel they’ve “lost your attention” the second you start to type away on a device.

Never mind what people feel - I care more about the fact that I do actually start to lose attention when I'm working on a laptop! (And I don't even need Internet for that, there's enough other things to distract me.)

Re: A Learning Secret: Don't Take Notes with a Laptop (2014)

#172

Post by smittywerben » Tue, Jun 25, 2019, 1:33 PM UTC

bayesian_horse wrote: post #34

In lectures, note-taking at all should be avoided, most of the time. Most lectures cover material that is presented very clearly in accompanying materials, books or the internet. The idea I could do a better job than those authors while listening to the stuff for the first time is ludicrous. And at least for me it doesn't help recollection or focus to write notes while listening, and many students report they can tak…

A teacher can only test on the topics they covered. I take notes of everything. I can tell the teacher what they have covered.

An ounce of analysis is worth a pound of law.

Re: A Learning Secret: Don't Take Notes with a Laptop (2014)

#173

Post by chapium » Tue, Jun 25, 2019, 1:34 PM UTC

logifail wrote: post #83

rcthompson wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not, but most people (or at least, most people who grew up with computers) can type faster than they can write, so the operative comparison is between frantically writing and typing at a comfortable pace.

I've never taken notes on a laptop. For those who do, are you typing every single word that the speaker says? I've taken notes on paper during many, many talks. I don't write down every word that's spoken. Isn't the cognitive load likely due to to deciding what content to record, not due to controlling the brain-hand-pencil-paper interface / brain-hands-keyboard interface (as it were)?

I take notes on a laptop for school and what I have learned is it is very valuable to reorganize notes after readings or lectures. My goal is always to make a document that I can review later that is structured. Restructuring online without rewriting entire pages is pretty efficient. Also, with some discipline you can tag sections and grep them later.

A disadvantage over writing is not having multiple columns if you are using plain text. Tools like onenote solve this, but I find it too distracting to use in general.

Re: A Learning Secret: Don't Take Notes with a Laptop (2014)

#174

Post by rb808 » Tue, Jun 25, 2019, 1:34 PM UTC

bayesian_horse wrote: post #34

In lectures, note-taking at all should be avoided, most of the time. Most lectures cover material that is presented very clearly in accompanying materials, books or the internet. The idea I could do a better job than those authors while listening to the stuff for the first time is ludicrous. And at least for me it doesn't help recollection or focus to write notes while listening, and many students report they can tak…

Some people are very good at organizing and reading & working on the material before the lecture. This seems ideal, though I'd never been able to do that.

Re: A Learning Secret: Don't Take Notes with a Laptop (2014)

#175

Post by codingdave » Tue, Jun 25, 2019, 1:41 PM UTC

I never took notes. It mildly disturbed my high school teachers, and greatly disturbed my college professors. Until the first tests/grades, when I did fine. Then they realized that I was actually listening, and getting the concepts. As the article said, the cognitive processing is what matter more than the actual notes you take.

Now I fully admit that if I had taken notes, I may have been an A student instead of a B student. But I just found the note-taking process to be a distraction from listening.

Re: A Learning Secret: Don't Take Notes with a Laptop (2014)

#176

Post by WhompingWindows » Tue, Jun 25, 2019, 1:42 PM UTC

seventhtiger wrote: post #116

I tended to be in the top of the classes I was in and as far as I've seen my method was somewhat different. I also only take notes on paper, but more importantly, I throw all my notes out as soon as I finish writing them. For me studying is the act of writing the notes. The purpose of notes was never to read them later. That's why writing on paper is important to me. It's not about the qualities and convenience of th…

Throwing notes away, that's a nice luxury. I had professors who would lift questions word-for-word from their lecture, throwing away my notes would've been throwing away points.

Re: A Learning Secret: Don't Take Notes with a Laptop (2014)

#177

Post by codingdave » Tue, Jun 25, 2019, 1:43 PM UTC

acconrad wrote: post #3

What if I want to take notes but not contribute to deforestation and issues with the environmental impact of using paper in 2019?

Paper is renewable. The rare earth metals in your devices are not. If you want to make this a political statement, you should instead research which paper companies are buying sustainable wood products, and buy from them.

Re: A Learning Secret: Don't Take Notes with a Laptop (2014)

#178

Post by zachruss92 » Tue, Jun 25, 2019, 1:52 PM UTC

This is actually something that I've been saying about myself for years - which I discovered through my own observations when I was in high school.

Long story short, I was in a "dual-enrollment" program which allowed me to take classes at a local college at night while going to high school during the day. I was able to graduate high school with over 30 college credits. One of the courses I took was psychology 101. I didn't particularly like this course (just wasn't interested compared to other subjects) and I ended up goofing off most of the time taking some notes on my laptop/iPad.

Needless to say, this affected my grades and I was at risk of failing the course. In order to study for the final, I ended up going through the book and taking notes of key terms and concepts - writing them down. I was able to get a real understanding of the content and ended up getting 100% on the exam and passing the course.

My lesson; my personal comprehension goes way up when I physically write things down. Now I keep a notebook that I use every day (a bullet journal). In many cases, I duplicate what I'm doing in my project management systems, but I am able to visualize what I need to do much more efficiently.

Re: A Learning Secret: Don't Take Notes with a Laptop (2014)

#179

Post by bpyne » Tue, Jun 25, 2019, 1:53 PM UTC

codingdave wrote: post #175

I never took notes. It mildly disturbed my high school teachers, and greatly disturbed my college professors. Until the first tests/grades, when I did fine. Then they realized that I was actually listening, and getting the concepts. As the article said, the cognitive processing is what matter more than the actual notes you take. Now I fully admit that if I had taken notes, I may have been an A student instead of a B…

I have the same issue with notes. When I have to analyze what I'm hearing, I can't do anything other than listen. It's like my brain shifts between modes.

My intuition is that I would have been an A student if I took time to write notes after the class while the memories were still fresh.

Re: A Learning Secret: Don't Take Notes with a Laptop (2014)

#180

Post by scottmsul » Tue, Jun 25, 2019, 2:13 PM UTC

I was physics/CS undergrad and did very well academically. I didn't really take notes much though. The strategy that worked for me was to read the book ahead of time, then the lectures were more to help digest material I was already familiar with. And for those giant auditorium-sized lecture classes, I just skipped class completely and only read the book. In fact I found taking notes to be distracting - how can I pay attention when I'm trying to copy everything down?