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Re: [Phys-L] [Phys-l] note-taking, or not

I agree. I, too, am moving around and interacting with students during
demonstrations and peer instruction. I give paper handouts of my notes and
revise them each year. Same with the math problems. No need for technology.

Phys-L@Phys-L.org writes:
Actually, IMO, one needs to be careful about Tablet PCs from a
pedagogical
viewpoint. We have a Chemistry Professor here who runs her class
(Organic)
entirely from her Tablet. She sits on the stage, writing on the tablet
for
the entire class. Yes she asks and takes questions, but she is fixed in
that seat. Don't know about others, but I'm moving around during class.
Even in our (very) small auditorium type classroom, I'm walking up and
down
the aisles (with bowling ball in hand) much of the class. The PowerPoint
slides are on the screen, but I'm moving about and hopefully engaging
many
different individuals into the discussions. Really writing your
'lectures'
on the fly with a Tablet might be tempting--thinking it is more
spontaneous
and allowing for working out problems, but you might find yourself rooted
to
one place in the classroom. Not sure that is a very good thing.

Rick

Richard W. Tarara
Professor of Physics
Saint Mary's College
Notre Dame, Indiana

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--------------------------------------------------
From: "John Denker" <jsd@av8n.com>

Here's a time-saving suggestion for anybody who is thinking of
going down this road: Get a tablet PC.

You can write on the tablet just as fast as you could write
on the board. The first year you do this, your notes will
be available at the end of class.

The next year, the notes will be available beforehand.

Each year you can spend a little time polishing the notes.
This takes time, but you don't need to do it all at once.

At some point you might decide to typeset some or all of it
in LaTeX to make it really pretty, but again, this doesn't
need to be done all at once. Don't let the perfect be the
enemy of the good.

There is OCR software that can read your handwriting. Last
time I checked, it wasn't able to produce good-quality human-
readable text, but it is still very useful, because it is good
enough to make the documents /searchable/.

Also ... if you are diametrically not a control freak, you can
put the notes on the web. Sometimes that leads to good things
happening. See below.


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