A Pair of Useful Things
Two useful (perhaps) links that are worth taking a look at (both discovered via twitter—thanks twitter friends):
- Ideas for Taking Notes: This is a response on meta-filter to ways to take notes when you are reading large sums of material. Some of the methods here will be familiar to academics, and “brain-in-a-box” software like Devon and Onenote gets a mention. There are some creative ideas though, like using a digital camera . . .
- Limesurvey: This one I have been waiting for, an open source survey application.
July 30th, 2008 at 12:15 am
I liked many of the ideas shared in the “Ideas for Taking Notes” posting and comments. I recently finished writing my first book (on teaching with classroom response systems), and I used a blog to keep track of my research and interview notes. The ability to tags posts let me categorize notes in multiple ways, and as I organized my tags over time, a structure for my book developed organically. Plus, my blog’s search tool gave me a second way to find important notes.
The original poster mentioned the challenge of capturing quotes from printed sources during note-taking. I wonder if the Livescribe Pulse pen might work well for that. One could use it to jot down a few notes about an interesting passage, then read the passage aloud. The pen records the audio and syncs it to the notes that are taken. Later, one could look through the handwritten notes, find a passage of interest, then tap the pen on the notes to hear the audio that was recorded when those notes were taken. I haven’t tried this technique, but it might be useful!