Students are probably already familiar with Google Docs’ collaborative tools for projects, but weblog HackCollege shows us how great it can be for simple note-taking during class, too.
It’s so simple, yet so genius, that I’m shocked I didn’t see any of this when I was in university. Lots of people will get together and compare notes to create massive study guides, but since Google Docs lets you collaborate in real time, why not just take the notes together in the first place? With a few different people working on the same set of notes, you can get a lot more written down than you could by yourself (especially if you have a fast-talking professor). The key, they say, is giving everyone a job:
The hardest part about this is keeping everybody from writing down the same thing at once, so get together with your partners before class and assign some responsibilities. The fastest typist can be in charge of copying whatever’s on the board or Powerpoint, while someone else fills in the details from the teacher’s lecture. You can even have someone in charge of scouring the internet for vocal terms or other easily-searchable information that comes up, and drop links into the document. The goal here is to divide and conquer, because with distributed note taking, you can focus all of your energies on doing one task extremely well, and rely on your partners to fill in behind you.
It takes a bit of getting used to, but could be quite a boon for your studying. Hit the link below to read the full post and see a video of it in action.
Use Google Docs to Tag-Team Class Note Taking [HackCollege]
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.