Notetaking

In the previous section, you saw that students can collaborate on projects together using a Word document. Collaborative note-taking is very easy when a student starts a document and then shares it with others using their emails and the big BLUE SHARE button. Those who have access to the document can take notes in real-time. 

A college student wrote this post on how note-taking in Google Docs changed her note-taking skills.  She used different colors for things she knew would be on the test and she also put her notes into nice outline form which is easy to do in Docs or Word because outlining tools are built into them. 

Below are some tweets from a college professor.

There are cons to collaborative note-taking. Many of these applications have built-in chats which cannot be turned off. The teacher may believe the students are working hard taking notes in their class and they may be using the chat feature instead. The feature was built-in on purpose so people could communicate and collaborate together on a document. Read the article to learn more about what kids are doing. 

If you do find your students are using the chat feature in class or at home, you will want to make sure and do a lesson on digital citizenship and make sure they are not bullying or leaving others out. We cannot abandon these important tools because kids will pass notes on paper, phone messages, or through Docs. Since it is a digital chat you can teach the students how to screenshot something inappropriate to share with you or their parents. 

Collaborative note-taking using the same document is very helpful in staff meetings and professional development. The leader can send out the agenda electronically and share the document with everyone in Docs or Word. One person can be selected to be the official note-taker but everyone else in the room can add their ideas and notes to the document. Additional websites and ideas that can beef up the notes can be added.

The Insert Comment feature (part of Docs and Word - highlight portion of text and go to Insert>Comment) can be used for questions and anyone who has the answer can answer the questions. 

Finally, let’s say you want to split the page into columns so that notes can be on both sides of a page. The easiest way to do that in Word/Docs is to create a table by going to Insert>Table>and choose two columns and one row. It is also handy if you want to insert images next to text. You can also add in a horizontal line from the Insert menu if you want to split off one section from another.

Google Keep is part of the Google Suite of Applications. You can access it by going to http://keep.google.com. If you are using Gmail or your calendar if you look over to the far right there is an icon for Keep so you make a quick note or access them when you are in your mail or calendar. 

Google Keep looks like a basic sticky note-taking app. It functions like a digital bulletin board covered in sticky notes. You can open Keep> Notes and add a title, begin taking notes, color code it, add an image, add a reminder, and most importantly when you click on the little person with the + sign you can add others to collaborate on your Keep note. Every time you or the person collaborating on the note makes a change it makes a change on all the collaborator’s notes. You can also create labels to organize your notes.

There is a Copy to Google Doc feature, which turns any note into an editable Google Doc where you can add images, comments, and links to files. Once you have created your note, click on the three dots on the note and you will see the ability to copy to Google Doc. This feature is nice because if you have multiple people taking notes in Keep you can more easily organize the notes later in Google Docs. Once transferred to Google Docs the group of collaborators can manipulate the notes for ease of studying. 

Use these step-by-step instructions from Google to download and use Keep to take notes. 

Web clipping is something else that is available when using Keep. If you are using the Chrome browser, you can add the Google Keep Chrome Extension. When you come across a webpage, image, or quote that you want to save for later, the Google Keep Chrome Extension, easily saves them to Google Keep.

Google Keep's most useful feature is audio transcription. It is only available on your mobile device in Google Play or the Apple Store. When you record your thoughts with Keep’s audio recorder in its mobile apps, Google transcribes the text and records the audio. Here are instructions for recording and sharing.

Google Keep also has an image to text transcription tool. Using Optical Character Recognition (OCR), Keep can transcribe text from pictures for you, so you don’t have to worry about typing up notes from a meeting. Just take a photo of notes taken at a meeting on a whiteboard, select “Grab Image Text” and Keep will transcribe your note.

Below are 15 ideas for students.