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

Sounds like the actual learning secret is "don't take verbatim notes", and the only relevance of the laptop is that it makes it much easier to take verbatim notes. I've pretty much only ever taken notes with a laptop, but I always take notes in the "digest and summarize" style, never recording the speaker's words verbatim, and it's worked great for me. (It wasn't a conscious decision; it's just how I take notes.)

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 take notes without the information passing through their brains. Other people swear they have to take notes to focus.

There are exceptions of course, for example if the information is new and any other available material is worthless.

I'm 53 and work in IT for a 'funky' learning/media company, ranking among the seniors in both age and position.

I have a customised Cornell Notes* Word doc template, and I run off batches of 5-10 sheets to take to meetings and training sessions. My colleagues typically turn up with their tablets, surfaces, laptops, phones and 'multitask', however a few have started to adopt my method - it's been particularly useful for client meetings where I have been able to later confirm sub-points or asides mentioned by customers - sometimes months later. It's also very easy to drill down through Quarterly reviews and link chains of historic comments 'on the fly' - for example, being able to confirm that so-and-so first mentioned something about a similar technical issue on a different system 12 months ago.

My 'Cornell' style has developed an element of mindmapping on the pages, which makes it easy to track conversations or sections of meetings that break off into side discussions/brainstorming.

The biggest benefit is that the structure of all notes is consistent, so not only can I find things very quickly, but others can interpret them too - this is a particularly powerful way to allow teams to share, compare and understand someone else's notes, even months after the meeting or training took place.

Edit: I also believe it looks very professional in customer meetings when everyone from the same business is taking notes in a similar way, using identical stationery.

I've been working this way since the mid 1990s and find it beats all forms of tech.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornell_Notes

http://lsc.cornell.edu/notes.html

For me the best way to take notes in lectures is/was a Boogie Board Sync which is sadly not available any more.

It is the best of both worlds. You basically have a zero latency touchscreen that can save your notes to PDF.

Even the best Tablets today have latency, most are designed more as touchscreen. Writing gets tiring and distracting really quick.

I wonder why the Boogie Board Sync was discontinued.

I suspect it more typically degrades. I always had poor handwriting scores but, over time, I wrote more and more for my personal consumption and speed became more important than style. Arguably shorthand would be more useful for people in general than impeccable Palmer script.