Note taking (thinking of IB students)

Hi there, I'm David and I want to present you some hints of taking notes and applications to take notes.

Why taking notes?

Because it helps to learn. When we write things down our brain needs to pass from the ethereal thinking to a some concrete version of "writing" (or drawing).

If you're learning (in general) or you're aiming specifically for doing any kind of assessment or exam, taking notes is going to improve your knowledge.

Types of notes

When you take notes (specially for classes such IB) there are 3 types of notes (The naming is mine).

• Class notes
• Whole notes (study notes)
• Summary notes

Class notes

The class notes are the notes taken in class or during any kind of lecture or meeting. Objective of these notes:

• Understanding the key parts of the class.
• Find any kind of "hole" in our understanding so we can say "I don't understand [ x ]"
• Be the raw material for the "whole notes" (the study notes)

How to take class notes

• I suggest to take notes by hand either with a notebook, individual sheets of paper or with a tablet.
• In all cases I suggest write a date every day so later you can put your notes in order (to make the study notes).
• Also if those notes have titles are going to be easier to be classified to make the study notes.
• If you use a tablet I suggest to use any kind of app that allows to use a pencil and the tablet as paper and don't use a keyboard. (More on that later)

When you take notes on this even if there is a presentation that is going to be delivered is forcing your brain to unwire the meaning of it to put it into the paper that you have.

In this moment you don't have to write everything. Just the important concepts. You can underline an idea if you see that it has been repeated. You can link to another topic or make a list easily, even create more of a mind map rather than a coherent text that you can read from start to finish. Specially if you actually have that text (the presentation).

So the reason for not using an app like google docs, word or similar is that for creating this ideas, or underline something that has been repeated is too slow and if you take that time to underline you're going to get lost from what the teacher is talking about.

Whole notes (study notes)

These are the notes taken after the class. These notes can be done in any physical or digital way. The objective of this notes are:

• Gather and order all the knowledge of the syllabus.
• Find and fill any gaps in this knowledge.
• Get intimate with this knowledge for the assessment (the exam)
• Share it with others (suggested) that have the same syllabus.

How to create the whole notes

The steps that I follow are usually

• Research
• Document
• (repeat if needed)

Depending if you're studying a lesson or the whole syllabus for a Mock exam or the final exams this will be longer or shorter.

First find if the unit/lesson/syllabus has any kind of index or subtopic. Once you find it, write it down. Then find the information that is relevant (class notes, slides, books) and fill it. Repeat the process until done.

Imporant

For this notes if the knowledge is relevant it should be copied and adapted to your notes. For the same reason that was noted before. The act of copying them (specially if you paraphrase them) is going to help you understand the topics that you need to learn.

Here is the place where you take the notes from your colleagues when you are sick to get the idea of what happened. Usually giving colours or different fonts or adding images is part of "order" the information.

If you're missing something, that's what you need to ask to your colleagues and/or teacher.

When the information is more difficult to classify there are other ways to create order in that chaos. There are other advanced ways of classifying information such as Zettlekasten but is out of the scope of this note.

What if I have more than one source?

First it's great to have more than one source of information. Your notes, the book, the previous exams, another youtube tutorial.

It depends, usually you can have a 1st source (a book or the chronological order of the classes) as an index and then you add the rest of the sources into the structure of what you already have (expanding if necessary).

When you integrate the next sources it's a great moment to evaluate which source of information explains it better or which details one of the sources miss. Remember that these "whole notes" should be whole, so you should include all the relevant information.

If you see any conflicts (source 1 says a and source 2 says not a for example) this is something that you should ask your teacher.

Summary notes

These are the notes that you do after studying just for revision. The goals of this notes are

• Summarize the study notes and the whole syllabus (so they must be shorter than those)
• Be a revision of what you're suposed to know.

How to create summary notes.

Usually you take your whole notes (study notes) and you shrink it down. The process of summarizing helps you synthesizing the knowledge that you are you supossing to have.

• This notes I usually take it by hand in maximum a A4 paper and I try to condense everything there.
• I don't use much time in these types of notes since is just a revision to ensure that everything is fresh in my mind.
• I usually use mind maps for these notes

Remember that even if they are being used to study this is a second version of the whole notes.

Media to taking notes

I strongly suggest using pen and paper specially for the class notes since many exams are done by hand so have a good handwriting is key.

Programs for study notes

[Programs to take notes for IB]