I am not a good notetaker when it comes to school. Actually, let me rephrase that – I am not a good notetaker when I’m asked to take notes on something. Taking notes because you’re interested and want to know more and taking notes on something for school that you are less interested in are two very different things. I always hated Cornell notes that our teacher made us do for class. It didn’t make sense to me because I organized my notes in a similar way just without the left side margin and summary at the end of every page. While I enjoyed reading, trying to take notes in a separate notebook was honestly a waste of my time as I spent more time trying to figure out what notes my teacher would like therefore earning me the highest grade. Since I spent so much time doing this, I forgot about the actual material I was supposed to be learning.

I guess my point from rambling on is that certain styles of note taking are better for certain people. I love taking notes on my laptop, its an easy way to keep up with the teacher when they lecture and organize them all on my Google Drive. However, you sometimes run into the issue of teachers not letting the class use a laptop. In this case, I often struggle as I am rushing to keep up with the teacher. Then, I begin to stress out as I want to do well in my class. Overall, the use of notes is an incredibly individual activity. Different styles of notes work for different people and different ways of paying attention work for different people. For example, I would not be able to take notes by hand if it was a very notes based class. In my journalism classes, however, I am able to take notes by hand because I am heavily invested in the material.

In our last lab, we looked at annotations on websites. I thought using hypothes.is was actually a really cool and useful tool. It’s something that would work great for group projects or researched based projects. This lab definitely changed my mind about taking notes and trying to understand information through annotation. Writing down questions you have or clarifications is extremely helpful, especially when it comes to writing research based papers or projects. I want hypothes.is to become something that children are taught when they are younger, like middle school age. I think this would be a really great tool to be used when teaching youth about writing research essays. Having individuals with accounts that easily connect with groups would be a great way for young students to learn how to collaborate, research and write.