Note Taking: Some benefits

Why do we take notes?
What cognitive processes involved with note-taking?

We take notes for many different reasons, including: to learn, to enhance long
term retention, and to document events. Note-taking allows people to outsource their
memories to an external source (paper), as well as make content explicit for future
reference. Critically, learning can occur during both the production and review of notes
by allowing the learner to make connections between idea units and engage in deep
processing of course content (Bohay, Blakely, Tamplin, & Radvansky, 2011; Piolat,
Olive, & Kellogg, 2005).

The act of note-taking also assists the learner in processing information, in addition to facilitating
and strengthening the internal connections between ideas (Kiewra et al., 1991).

As creatives, taking notes is a very important part of our daily lives...Doodling if you'd like to call it that.
The benefits of note taking are in a large number.

So, how do we identify quality notes? Remember way back when we had to reference a friends note for one thing or the other and we were like "whats's this and this" and they collected the notes and read it out to us. This is because people have different ways of taking notes. Some write them in very tiny letters, some in maps and many other ways.

There are two styles of taking notes basically, Linear and non-linear

What methods are best to take notes?
From my experience with interacting with people it's just best to find that which suits you.

Here are some suggestions:

1. Take generative notes: making thenotes in your own words so they will help you to better remember the topics that were being discussed

2. Review early and often: Review your notes shortly after lecture—clarify any
   questions or ambiguities you may have lingering from lecture, either by
   consulting peers, instructors, course materials, etc. Ideally, this brief review
   should occur on the same day and can assist you in identifying what
   is important from the session and help you take higher quality notes in future
   instances.

3. Test yourself

4. Carefully think of how you want to take notes: find the best way that suits you because you will be the one revisiting them most times.

5. Be careful of misinterpretations during your note taking: This can lead to poor study behaviors and decisions.

HYBRID NOTE TAKING SYSTEMS
A hybrid note-taking system is any hardware or software that combines the advantages of laptop and pen and paper note-taking. There are various applications for this process and some of them are:
Livescribe
Audionote
Evernote

Also, from my experience its always a nice idea to have something to much on from all that note taking. Would you agree?

Thanks for stopping by and i hope this was as interesting to you.

REFERENCES:
Notes on Note -Taking: Review of Research and Insights for Students and Instructors
Michael C. Friedman
Harvard Initiative for Learning and Teaching
Harvard University
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All pictures are mine and these ones were taken with my samsung camera.