Okay! So this weeks post is about note taking. So I don’t have a whole ton to say on this. Its mostly just the few things that I do that make my notetaking easier. As with everything I have ever written some may work for you and some may not. Feel free to choose the ones that work for you and to let go of the ones that don’t! So here it goes.
J.M.’s Guide to Successful Note Taking
So, the first thing that I always do when taking notes is determine whether I am taking notes on the PowerPoint, a lecture (if they don’t have a PowerPoint), or both (if they do). In some classes the teachers PowerPoint is all the notes that you will need for a class. Sometimes they don’t have a PowerPoint and you have to take notes on everything that they say. Sometimes, they do have a PowerPoint but its just the simple reminder like notes and they lecture on the side on those notes as well. So, we will address all three of these points individually.
The first kind of lecture is a PowerPoint lecture. These are pretty straight forward. The teachers says exactly what is written on the PowerPoint. Nothing more, nothing less. These are those lectures that when its done you are wondering why you needed the teacher to be there for the lecture. You could have just read the PowerPoint and got everything out of it that they said. For note taking on these all you have to do is write down what’s on the PowerPoint. Simple.
The second kind a lecture. The kind where they don’t have a PowerPoint. When you get lectures like this I tend to just write anything down that they said that I didn’t know already. When this happens I scribble it all down, some of it shorthand and then go and rewrite it nice later. Rewriting it nice later also requires an extra notebook on my part. Some people prefer to do this type of notetaking on a computer where it can be edited later easier than a notebook. But I’m a bit old fashioned on note taking and I prefer a notebook.
The third kind is both. In my experience this is how most teachers teach. The ones I learn the most from, I might add. So when they do this I listen as they begin each slide of the PowerPoint and while they begin to lecture I am immediately starting into the PowerPoint notetaking, copying it down. Then as they lecture about the slide I write any additional things that they say into my notes. Sometimes these notes also need to be rewritten later because I write so quickly that studying them would not be as easy. But most of the time I just leave them as is.
Additional advice that I have for notetaking is always use bullet points. I like to have a general heading followed by sub categories and any notes in each of these categories. For example, these are the notes that I took in my Archaeology class a couple weeks ago.
* Areas of early farming in China
---- Lower Yangtze
(10,000 BP)
Hunting gathering fishing
Exploitation and manipulation of rice
Fully domesticated around 6,700 BP
---- Middle Yangtze
(10,000 BP)
All of lower yangtze
Clear evidence of rice paddies
And so, on and so forth. You can get the idea. Another two things that I do is highlighting. I right down everything that I think is going to be important and then I highlight in one color for things that are the most most important. Like stuff I know is going to be on a test. The other color is notes/concepts that I am having trouble remembering and will need to remember again. I also use sticky notes to make after notes notes. Meaning that after I have taken the notes in class maybe later I figure out something that helps me understand a certain note better. I write this information on a sticky note and stick it onto my notes.
So that’s it. That’s all I do to take notes. I hope that was helpful in some ways and if not, I hope that it can be more helpful in the future.
Next week I will be writing on my ultimate dream reading place. This one is only an optional entry for the post. You don’t have to send a comment, but it will be appreciated. See you next week!