Note Taking With A Tablet: Brilliant or Bonehead?

July 23, 2006 11:11 AM

DorkyStudentFilter: Looking to see if anyone else has used a tablet to assist in taking notes in class, and other ideas for note taking.

I did some research, and I'm wondering if anyone else has used a Wacom (or other brand, I'm not brand loyal) tablet to assist with note taking. The last two years of my undergrad, I took notes on a laptop and loved it. The only downside was diagrams - and those were almost impossible to do with plain text.

I'm attending law school this fall and have my heart set on getting the highest grades I've ever gotten at any learning institution.

If you have any recommendations on software in regards to what has worked for you as a note taker in law school, please, let me know as well. Oh, BTW - I'm a Mac guy. Thanks!

posted by plaidrabbit to education (13 comments total)

The best mix of the two (that I ever came across)...

Was the Apple emate.

It was a black and white, flash ram storage that could work 12-24 hours on a charge. And you could draw directly on the screen.

The biggest PITA now you'd have is syncing it to a desktop. Oh, and it looks like a green purse.

But it had a "works" program...and was (by far) the best "note taking" experience. You could literally turn it into a crook of your arm, completely open and sketch on the screen.

It has limited internet/mail ability (over say, wireless). But yeah, it rocked.

Search ebay and you can get one for less than $100. And versiontracker for sync'ing accessories.
posted by filmgeek at 11:28 AM on July 23, 2006

I used a Pocket PC with a good fold up keyboard the last two years and it worked pretty well. However, this year I'm going to try going back to plain old paper and pen. I've been using this technique some over the summer with the Cornell notetaking method and I'm finding I'm paying a lot more attention and taking a lot more notes than I do when typing them. It doesn't make any sense to me why, but so far so good.

The next step is transcribing them into OneNote and maybe PhatNotes (Pocket PC) so I can access my notes on my computer and anywhere I have my IPAQ.
posted by chrisWhite at 12:10 PM on July 23, 2006

Keep in mind that for law school, you're mac isn't going to be supported. For the examsoft software (used for the exams), only PCs are supported.

I hardly saw anyone use tablets in law school.
posted by Juggermatt at 12:13 PM on July 23, 2006

Are you talking about the fancy, interactive LCD-screen tablet that shows you what you write, or the ordinary tablets that work like a mouse substitute? The latter type is good for drawing, but pretty bad for handwriting; you have to look at the screen while you are writing, which screws up the usual read/write feedback loop. You might want to consider the Cyberpad instead. You write on paper, but the gadget records every stroke in memory, and lets you upload it to your computer later.
posted by gentle at 12:25 PM on July 23, 2006

I have a Toshiba M400 running Windows. You can flip the screen around, so you can use it both as a tablet and a laptop. I use OneNote for taking notes. I can take notes without looking at the tablet excessively. The handwriting conversion is pretty good. The only distracting thing is having to create new pages in a notebook too frequently for my tastes. I find it is easier to manage the tablet if I have a laser mouse for pointing and use the stylus only for writing.

The tablet/laptop combination is pretty cool. If I'm sitting somewhere boring with a wireless connection, I can check email and surf web in laptop mode. If I am in a meeting, I can take notes in tablet mode.

The main drawbacks are cost, flimsiness, and underpowered-ness. My tablet is a corporate asset assigned to me by my corporate overlords, so I don't know what these things cost fully kitted out. The DVD-ROM fell out when I was carrying it around two days after I got it, thank goodness I have help desk to order parts and deal with warranty. Personally, I don't mind the crappy hard drive too much, but some of my coworkers complain about slow disk i/o.
posted by crazycanuck at 12:47 PM on July 23, 2006

HP Tablet PC TC1100 with Onenote might be a good alternative?
posted by DrtyBlvd at 1:13 PM on July 23, 2006

I've owned a Wacom tablet in the past, and I've used tablet PCs at work. I wouldn't use either of them for taking notes in class.

What I would do if I were you is continue to take notes on your laptop, and then hand-draw your diagrams and reference them on your notes (i.e., see fig. 2), or else take a picture of the diagram your professor uses and then drop it into your notes later.

Although, in truth, for most of the classes I had in which diagrams appeared during a lecture, the professor was using PowerPoint, and almost always made his slides available on the class website.
posted by Hildago at 2:31 PM on July 23, 2006

Will diagrams be an issue in law school? They are used very rarely in history.

I swiched to doing notes entirely on laptop (typing) and I wouldn't go back. For text oriented subjects, it is excellent. But it's the typing that make it so convenient - it's the same speed as my writing, but I never have to retype if I want to have it all typed up.
posted by jb at 4:48 PM on July 23, 2006

For written notes, I use Circus Ponies' NoteBook and for diagrams, I use OmniGraffle Pro
Works great, even in a Windows-centric company :-) No need for a pad or mouse or whatever. And I do it on my MacBook Pro, of course :-)
posted by KimG at 5:50 PM on July 23, 2006

I'd think with a small wacom tablet, a copy of omnigraffle, and some practice you could take down the (relatively few) diagrams you'll see in law school lectures quite easily.

You could also just do what a friend of mine did and bring a nice-ish digital camera to class, photographing each iteration of the blackboard for later reference.
posted by little miss manners at 6:34 PM on July 23, 2006

This is a total derail, but why all the technology? I don't think you'll ever find something as good as paper. Technology just turns into a distraction way too easily, at least for me. What's the big benefit of tablet based notes? Future look-up? I've never had a problem with that, but maybe it's a bigger deal in law school. For me, the real value of notes was the act of writing them down. It kept me focused, kept my hands busy, and made me remember the content more. So I'd recommend not jumping too quickly to a technological solution. Maybe try doing it old-school for the first few weeks of class?
posted by heresiarch at 8:42 PM on July 23, 2006

I can't comment on the tablet, but I did have an "other idea." For most of my classes, pen and paper worked fine, but I had one professor who spoke too quickly and too monotonously for me to keep up. I emailed him and asked if I could record his lectures*. He didn't mind, so I bought a fairly cheap digital voice recorder with a usb cable so I could dump the audio to my computer.

I probably got more out of it than some because I learn better by hearing anyway, but it was nice to be able to go back and fill in notes that I'd missed. It also allowed plenty of time for copying down diagrams. One thing I found that helped too was still taking notes on pen and paper with occasional time stamps in case I missed something.

*Some professors are very strict about what you can and can't do with their lectures (I had one professor who copyrighted her lecture slides). I'd imagine law school professors are very strict, so always ask permission before recording their lectures.
posted by chndrcks at 8:53 PM on July 23, 2006

Contrary to Juggermatt, I'm in law school and use a mac. The exam software that we use both PC's and macs are supported. There are approx. 30% mac users at my school. Also, I think only one student in my class uses a tablet PC, the rest use laptops or paper. There isn't much diagramming in class, so I wouldn't be too concerned about that. For myself, I just take notes on paper right next to the case briefs/book notes I do prior to class. I found that having a laptop open in class was just way too distracting - classes are boring and we have wireless throughout the school. Good luck!
posted by miss meg at 3:58 PM on July 24, 2006