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The Cornell Note-Taking System

lsc.cornell.edu

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Re: The Cornell Note-Taking System

#21

Post by ravenstine »

llamaz wrote: post #4

I have tried this, and tt's a good pedagogical method for learning-how-to-learn, but it's inconvenient in practice I think it's worth learning how to use Anki instead. The key challenge there is selecting the right level of coarseness, so that it doesn't take forever. Even if you don't end up reviewing your cards, the act of synthesising information helps you learn it. Down the line you're able to encode important in…

They tried to get us to take Cornell notes back in high school. I think they can work for some people, but I found that it created too much mental overhead. Seemed to turn me into more of a recording device than a mind comprehending a lecture. The note-taking style seems to assume a certain format of lecture, and if a teacher deviates from that then it can be more confusing than simply taking notes without the extra columns and cells.

That said, I think it's a good idea, but might not be for everyone. Kind of like how there are different apps like Notion, Trello, Quip, OneNote, etc., and while Notion works for a lot of people, some people benefit more from Trello's boards and cards.

Re: The Cornell Note-Taking System

#22

Post by rckoepke »

artimaeis wrote: post #9
lowdose wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Record everything, ML multi-speaker speech-to-text every conversation. Plug text input into company search engine. Radical transparency by giving everybody access to this interface. Awesome bullshit filter.

> ML multi-speaker speech-to-text every conversation Neat idea, do you know of any software that's capable of taking an audio file and producing multi-user text from it? Seems like it would be useful in a wide variety of situations.

Trint[0] has a wonderful UI/UX for exactly this. I'm not sure if they're using the latest & greatest ML models, but even years ago I was pretty blown away. I still am. It's one of the most "right" products I've seen in this generation of web development. Someone realllllllly cared about the details of UX.

Some of that only comes across when you actually use it - when you clean up the transcription immediately after the meeting or the next day. Clicking a mistake word to edit it snaps the video and audio to that point, so its super intuitive to "scrub" through the video just by clicking around the text transcription. Very fast, very natural, very low effort.

I can only imagine how much it will be improved if it used google's newest multi-speaker transcription models. It always had some trouble whenever people started talking at the same time.

[0] https://trint.com

Re: The Cornell Note-Taking System

#24

Post by blowski »

throw0101a wrote: post #19
blowski wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use what I know as the the "Bill Gates method". Separate things into: * important points * questions to ask, either during the meeting or afterwards. If it gets answered during the meeting, I put the answer under 'important points' and cross out the question. * things for you to do after the meeting * any commitments others take on which you want to keep track of I do this by entering them on different areas of the…

> I use what I know as the the "Bill Gates method". Is there a good description/explanation of this?

I read years ago that this is how Bill Gates takes notes, but I don't remember where I read it. It wasn't much more detailed than my comment here.

Re: The Cornell Note-Taking System

#25

Post by pwenzel »

blowski wrote: post #10
tra3 wrote: post #3

Any tips for taking meeting notes specifically?

I use what I know as the the "Bill Gates method". Separate things into: * important points * questions to ask, either during the meeting or afterwards. If it gets answered during the meeting, I put the answer under 'important points' and cross out the question. * things for you to do after the meeting * any commitments others take on which you want to keep track of I do this by entering them on different areas of the…

Sounds a lot like the Bullet Journal method (which I use daily)

Re: The Cornell Note-Taking System

#26

Post by Bartweiss »

ravenstine wrote: post #21
llamaz wrote: post #4

I have tried this, and tt's a good pedagogical method for learning-how-to-learn, but it's inconvenient in practice I think it's worth learning how to use Anki instead. The key challenge there is selecting the right level of coarseness, so that it doesn't take forever. Even if you don't end up reviewing your cards, the act of synthesising information helps you learn it. Down the line you're able to encode important in…

They tried to get us to take Cornell notes back in high school. I think they can work for some people, but I found that it created too much mental overhead. Seemed to turn me into more of a recording device than a mind comprehending a lecture. The note-taking style seems to assume a certain format of lecture, and if a teacher deviates from that then it can be more confusing than simply taking notes without the extra…

I've had this problem with every form of structured note-taking I've ever tried. My focus is redirected to writing everything down and ensuring I'm using the appropriate format like a stenographer, so badly that when the professor asks "Any questions? Does everyone understand this?" I don't know whether I understand - I haven't engaged my brain yet.

Even worse, I have to start wrestling with the format as soon as anything unusual happens. If I miss something, or the professor makes a mistake, or someone asks an important question clarifying that bit 10 lines ago, or the structure of the information isn't linear, I want to be able to bounce around my notes connecting and fixing things in a way that I'll understand later.

Structured systems like Cornell notes work well enough in a slow, perfectly sequential lecture, but everything works there. And I imagine they might probably be good for memorizing completely synthetic content like the rules of an unfamiliar game, where there's not much thought to apply. But for practical notetaking, I think their best use is after the lecture, as a way to convert "get the content down" notes into a study-friendly format.

Re: The Cornell Note-Taking System

#27

Post by nradov »

I question the value of taking notes at all. Of course different people learn in different ways, and I'm sure some students can benefit from taking notes. But for me the process of note taking is too distracting. Better to just focus on the lecturer and really listen. Then maybe write a few short notes afterwards for points not adequately covered in the assigned text.

Re: The Cornell Note-Taking System

#28

Post by DailyHN »

GTD turned me on to notecards. I can't imagine going back. No matter how you want to organize the important stuff, the ephemeral nature of 3x5 notecards helps me get more ideas out of my head than ever before.

"Your brain is for having ideas, not remembering them."

Re: The Cornell Note-Taking System

#29

Post by _jal »

llamaz wrote: post #4

I have tried this, and tt's a good pedagogical method for learning-how-to-learn, but it's inconvenient in practice I think it's worth learning how to use Anki instead. The key challenge there is selecting the right level of coarseness, so that it doesn't take forever. Even if you don't end up reviewing your cards, the act of synthesising information helps you learn it. Down the line you're able to encode important in…

I tend to think that, so long as one isn't doing something really odd, most of the value comes from practicing any system at all.

The important thing is the repetition/correction cycle.

Re: The Cornell Note-Taking System

#30

Post by atoav »

nradov wrote: post #27

I question the value of taking notes at all. Of course different people learn in different ways, and I'm sure some students can benefit from taking notes. But for me the process of note taking is too distracting. Better to just focus on the lecturer and really listen . Then maybe write a few short notes afterwards for points not adequately covered in the assigned text.

I don’t see a contradiction there. As you said: differnt people learn in different ways. Just speaking for myself, but I can concentrate more if I take notes and not less (unless the thing is very visual in nature).
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