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Re: taking notes



I started making my overheads years ago using HyperCard. It was nice since I
could print 6 slide to a page as handouts for my students so they would not
have to spend the whole period writing furiously. My mistake (so I believe
now) is that my overheads were comprehensive - each panel stood on its own
as a text book does- no lecture needed. Students rarely read or annotated my
handouts.

Now I've moved on to power point and an projector. I still print
miniatures, but now the presentations I make are much different. The slides
are frameworks for the students to take notes on. Pictures and diagrams, but
no solutions or explanations, questions without answers, bulleted outlines
but no details.
I feel this is a compromise. Students still take (or rather add to) notes,
but are freed from scribing the details needed to make sense of the
important points. In class this has been successful. Students taking notes
do not have to write so much and are more free to participate in class. I
give all open note exams - those who sat passively through the presentation
find the notes I gave them of little use later.


Scott




on 12/14/01 1:02 PM, Stefan Jeglinski at jeglin@4PI.COM wrote:

Let's move now from the advantage of the note-taking _act_
to the advantage of later having good notes to look at.
That's a different subject entirely.

My small contribution to this topic regards my grad school experience.

I often found myself saying to myself: why am I doing this? (taking
notes). Generally it was because I feared "missing something." I
would have much rather sat back and tried to absorb and think about
it in real time as John mentioned. If I knew that the topic on the
board at that moment was actually already done in the text, I could
have done so comfortably.

One problem was that I had a wide variety of professors. Some (I
discovered) just redid what the text already did, while others put
unique things on the board. But virtually none ever explained what
they were doing. I quickly outlived my welcome in one class by trying
to get the prof to note this point with every class, and so learned
to not question it.

Only one professor ever that I had saw this for what it was and in
just a couple of comments became a classroom -leader- by describing
beforehand the point and content of his lecture and whether it was
textbook-based or something unique. He was in fact a Brazilian
post-doc talked into teaching E&M by the regularly scheduled prof who
wanted to do something else for 2 quarters. Best teacher I ever had.


Stefan Jeglinski

--
*****************************
Scott Goelzer
Physics Teacher
Coe - Brown Northwood Academy
Northwood NH 03261
603-942-5531 ext43
sgoelzer@coebrownacademy.com
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