Note Taking and Online Learning

In order to get the most out of your notes, you need to refine your techniques: that high school style of recording everything you hear (or maybe you were one of the ones that didn’t take notes at all :p) won’t cut it anymore. Firstly, educate yourself on some different note taking approaches. These include how to use a presentation that you have access to prior the lecture, how to take notes when access to the presentation isn’t happening and how to use pre-defined templates to help better organize your notes as you take them, such as the Cornell Note Taking system.

Also included in this module is how to take notes on new types of educational materials outside the classroom like online video and/or audio. Knowing the difference between standard lectures and audio/video effective listening and learning makes a huge difference in how useful your notes will actually be to you later on. Part of this difference is realizing how much more information audio/video information is throwing at you at once. One remedy to this abundance of information is to use different note-taking technologies such as mind-maps, One Note or Inspiration.

The final important thing to grasp out of this week’s module was how to effectively use the internet to supplement your learning in the classroom on a topic. Great learners don’t stop learning in the classroom; they pursue answers to unanswered questions outside of the classroom. Podcasts and online videos can be a great way gain further insight on difficult, complicated or just multi-layered topics that need more time to full comprehend and which can be more fully understood from multiple angles or perspectives.