Hey there, notetaking enthusiasts! Let’s be real: traditional note-taking methods can be as dry as that stale bagel you accidentally left in your laptop bag. How can we revolutionize this essential learning tool and maximize productivity? Say hello to interactive notes, your soon-to-be savior.
It’s not just about jotting down what you’ve heard in lectures or lessons; it’s about making your notes a visual, engaging, and memorable map of knowledge that’s tailored specifically to you. For all you visual learners out there, imagine adding images, doodles, and graphic organizers to your notes. Think Microsoft Word, Google Docs, or PowerPoint presentations with a sprinkle of your own creativity.
From the Cornell method’s left-hand column for key vocabulary and summary to the outline method’s structured hierarchy of main ideas, supporting ideas, and details, there’s a note-taking strategy out there that suits your style.
Got a central idea from your history or science class? Break it down into key ideas and concepts, underline the important points, and don’t forget to leave space for your thoughts, comments, and connections. You can even use digital tools to create mind maps, using lines, arrows, and boxes to link ideas and better visualize the academic content. It’s like creating a web of knowledge where each thread leads you deeper into understanding.
Gone are the days when class notes meant a boring, confusing mess of text. Many teachers are now encouraging students to write in their own words, and students learn better by incorporating new ideas into existing knowledge. Better yet, making these notes interactive can help you retain more information, which is the key to succeeding in any academic exercise.
So don’t just glance over your notes; let’s get interactive and transform that note-taking process into a deep, focused work of art. Buckle up and stay tuned for some game-changing tips on making your notes more interactive, efficient, and, dare we say, fun. So, what are you waiting for? It’s time to rethink note-taking in the digital age!
Imagine you’re at the movie theater, there to see the newest installment of your favorite film franchise. For the sake of the illustration, let’s just say that it’s the latest Marvel movie, which at the time of writing this is “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.” (If you haven’t seen it yet, don’t worry; I haven’t seen it either, so I won’t be giving you any spoilers!)
Let’s imagine together the typical movie-theater experience. You’ve got your too-small container of delectable buttery theater popcorn in one hand and an overpriced soft drink in the other. Or maybe you smuggled in some jelly beans under your jacket (your secret’s safe with me).
Either way, you’re enjoying the movie well enough. Marvel is wildly popular for a reason, after all, much of which comes down to the action sequences, fast pace, timely humor, and our insatiable love of superheroes always winning in the end. Your fellow audience members laugh and gasp at all the right moments, and you’re feeling pretty good about your experience. When the final credits finally roll, you get up feeling more or less satisfied and head out of the dark into the hallway (which for some reason always feels a bit echoey, doesn’t it? Why is that?) and back into the real world.
Will the film stick with you? Maybe, maybe not. That depends in large part on its quality, of course, which I won’t speak to. Or, the next time a Marvel movie comes out, will you find yourself having to Google a refresher on what happened in this film so that you will be able to follow along with the next installment?
Keeping that scenario in mind, now imagine this: you’re having the exact same experience, except you’re watching “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” in 3-D (disclaimer: it did not actually come out in 3-D; this is a completely theoretical example). Now, when the Benatar spaceship is rocketing through the galaxy at the speed of light—or whatever it does in the film—you can feel the gravitational pull in your bones as the stars flash past you.
Now, when Drax the Destroyer walks towards the camera, you can feel the full intimidation of his 6’3″ frame. And when the crew members jostle each other around, you can feel the energy as if you were there in the room with them.
Your senses are heightened, and your spatial awareness is engaged on a whole different level. There’s more adrenaline in your bloodstream as your hormones are on high alert for what might be coming at you next—virtual though the reality of it is. Under no circumstances would you even think of glancing at your phone right now; you are completely focused on the story in front of you.
When you walk away from this experience, will it stick out more in your memory? Be honest. Even if you’re not a fan of 3-D films and prefer the familiar experience of the first scenario, there’s something about the engagement of the second that makes it more likely to encode itself into your memory. And the good news is: you can utilize this trick in your note-taking strategies and to take their effectiveness and your productivity to the next level.
Strap into your note-taking spaceship, my friends, and let’s go explore the galaxy of interactions.
Why Interaction Is Important in Note-Taking
As illustrated in our introduction, interaction does make a difference in one’s experience. Whether or not you liked the analogy of 3-D films is a bit beside the point, because sure, everyone has their own preference for which experience they enjoyed more.
You may ultimately decide that interactive notes are not your preference—and that’s totally fine! The point of notes is that they work for you, so if interactive elements aren’t your thing, then, by all means, leave them out.
However, if you stick around until the end of this blog post, you will hopefully realize some of the benefits of making your notes interactive. You may also be surprised at just how many different ways there are to do this. And more likely than not, at least one of the ways we discuss will be suitable for your note-taking style and will boost your learning objectives.
And that’s exactly what interactive note-taking can do: boost your learning objectives. One way it can do this is by capturing the learner’s attention more fully, putting them into a state of concentration and active listening. Learners in this mode will hear and comprehend more of the content because they are engaged more deeply in it.
Interactive note-taking will also activate more regions of your brain, which will create a whole-brain effort to process the information. The more regions of your brain you activate in a single activity, the deeper it will embed itself in your memory.
The techniques we’re going to discuss also encourage higher-level thinking like synthesis and analysis because they help learners pause, engage with, and reflect on the material. The creativity of it will make you more likely to make connections between ideas.
The variety of these techniques makes them adaptable and ideal for different learning styles, even aiding note-takers with learning disabilities. And finally, interactive note-taking tools will be fantastic not only for taking notes but also for reviewing them later on.
10 Techniques for Interactive Note-Taking
Welcome cinemagoers and interaction enthusiasts; your feature film will start shortly. Please take a moment to silence your cell phones or turn them on vibrate so that they don’t disturb the people around you. Now, we shall dim the lights and press the play button on what you all came here to see: 10 ways to make your notes more interactive.
#1: Write Your Notes Longhand
Research shows that learners who handwrite their notes are better engaged in understanding the material. Because it takes longer to write than to type, longhand note-takers are forced to really listen to and think through the material in order to effectively paraphrase it. Thus, they must rely on active listening rather than the passive absorption of information.
Handwriting also engages a kinesthetic element and motor skills that typing does not, as well as requiring greater spatial awareness of the page and where all of the information is on it. According to neuroscientists, activating the various regions of the brain involved in these different calculations forces them to communicate with each other, which creates new neurological pathways concerning the connections, relationships, and links in the material.
All of this lends itself to deeper comprehension of the material, as well as higher retention rates.
What About Word Count?
Your notes may end up being shorter in word count than those of a peer taking digital notes, but that’s not a bad tradeoff. Word count isn’t actually all that important when it comes to effective notes; quality is more important than quantity. A study conducted in 2014 found that while typists’ notes have a higher word count, those students actually performed worse on quizzes than their longhand counterparts.
Essentially, choosing to take your notes longhand rather than typing them on a keyboard is one really easy way to make them more interactive for your brain while you’re taking them, which will reap a host of rewards.
#2: Chunk Content
There’s only so much room in your working memory, which is the part of your memory that stores information that you’re currently using. The memories in this storage tank may be either short-term or long-term memories, depending on how long you keep them in your working memory.
The easy solution might be to simply keep all of that data in your working memory until it transitions automatically into your long-term memory. Then you can consider it locked in for good. Voila! But unfortunately, there’s a catch: neuroscientists say we can only hold about seven items of information at a time in our short-term memory at one time; your working memory is even less.
This is where chunking comes in. This is a term that refers to the technique of “chunking” various individual pieces of information into a single big glob of information that your brain can store as a unit.
For example, instead of learning about the earth, moon, and sun individually, students are introduced to them as a solar system. That way, each is related to the others, and you are better able to remember things like rotation, revolutions, and other patterns. As a result, the brain chunks all of these details under the broader category of “solar system.” Useful, right?
Sometimes the presenter will chunk information for you, but other times you must take it upon yourself. This means that you have to really pay attention and think through the material and how you can group the information in your notes (and in your brain).
#3: Fill-in-the-Blank Notes
Another interactive technique is to create fill-in-the-blank notes, which will be particularly helpful for later review. Please note that I’m not suggesting you leave words out of your notes and try to fill them in later—that method would be a potential disaster! But you can utilize this technique to great effect when self-testing yourself on the material later on.
Create a separate section in your notes and write down sentences or phrases, leaving some of the words blank. When it comes time to review, see if you can’t fill in the words from memory. And you can take it a step further and use this opportunity to expand further on what each of those words, sentences, and phrases represent. Walk yourself through all of the information associated with each, making sure to touch on any key terms and concepts.
This is also a good interactive game to play with your peers, teachers, or study partners. If you do have study partners, hangman is a similar game that you could play that would help you engage more creatively with the material.
#4: Coloring and Labeling a Diagram
A similar technique uses a diagram to similar effect, but with the added benefit of visuals. We’ll talk more about visuals and the brain later on, but suffice to say that incorporating a bit of color, some pleasing shapes, and images will boost your retention of the subject matter.
You can either print the diagram off the internet or draw it yourself for an even more immersive interactive experience. Use whatever colors strike your fancy to decorate the diagram; you can even shade it in or blend colors if you want to get really creative. Add labels for each part of the diagram, perhaps using funky fonts or color-coding them as well.
Just like with the fill-in-the-blanks technique, you can expand this practice by taking the additional time to write down everything you remember about each label. You could even write down what prompted you to use the different colors in the way that you did; doing this will better associate the label with the color and, more importantly, with its place in the diagram.
Say you’re learning about atoms. If you hear someone explain what an atom looks like, you get a vague image in your head, but it may be hard to depict at first thought. But it’s a very simple diagram to draw—even you can do it! Just a couple of circles with the neutron at the center. After coloring your atom, you can include a couple of little charts with more information, such as the number of particles included in that atomic structure, or formulas such as how to calculate its atomic mass. By all means, go all out and make a full set of notes like this if you enjoy it!
#5 Card Sorts
There are a number of things you can do with cards to make your notes more interactive. To make card sorts, you first create a handful of cards corresponding to your notes. Write a key term, phrase, or definition on each, or draw an image, symbol, or other visual that you associate with something in your notes. Mix them all up and then practice sorting them, placing each card by its partner in your notes.
If you make cards for each set of associations, you can play a matching game. Mix them all up and then place them face down on the floor in a neat rectangular shape. Then, begin by turning two of the cards over. If they match, term to definition or term to visual, then leave them facing upward and turn over two cards. If they don’t match, turn them face-down and turn over two others. Keep going until you’ve uncovered all of the sets.
If you want to get really invested in the artistic side of card techniques, you could always illustrate your own deck of cards, complete with visuals and terms from your notes. Then every time you play a card game with a friend, it’s like a mini-study session. Or better yet, create this deck with your study group and then play together!
#6: Add Visuals
I promised some context on the neuroscience behind visuals, so here’s a synopsis for you: The brain associates beauty with a “good for me” evaluation, so if your notes are visually pleasing, your brain will look upon them much more favorably. Part of the brain’s evaluation of beauty is also tied to feeling states—particularly those that involve cognition and motivation. Which is altogether very helpful when note-taking, because you can use visuals to make you feel something about the image, and that will sharpen your cognitive awareness of it.
One of the biggest advantages of using visuals in your notes is that they help you see associations, connections, and relationships between the information. That’s because visuals activate multiple regions of your brain at the same time, stimulating them to communicate with each other.
What Kinds of Visuals?
You may be wondering what kinds of visuals I’m talking about. The answer is: anything you can think of! You can straight up paint masterpieces that represent your notes if you want, or you can just do some pencil sketches. Or you can simply use some color to give your notes a bit more pizazz, or even print some images from the internet and paste them into your notebook.
Symbols, underlining, highlighting, circles, boxes, and stars also count as visuals. Using any of the above will encourage you to interact with your notes on a deeper level, and will be fun, too!
#7: Ask Questions
One of the best ways to make your notes interactive is to ask questions. Ask questions before, during, and after the session. Ask your teacher, ask your peers, and ask yourself. Never stop asking questions!
You can start asking questions before you even begin to take notes. Before the session begins, take a look at any handouts you were given and review your notes from any previous classroom sessions. Think about the upcoming session and what might be covered. Write down any questions that come to mind, and be ready to ask the instructor. You can always try to answer yourself, too, and then see if your answer is correct.
During the session, write down any questions you have about the lecture or material. Maybe there’s something you need further clarification on or an inquiry that wasn’t covered by the speaker. You can always ask them in person after the session or do your own research on your own time.
Start conducting your first review immediately after the session. While summarizing all the key points that were discussed, take note of any questions that come up about what was covered. Maybe, upon reflection, you realize that something was left out or that there’s a gap you don’t understand.
By asking questions, you are strongly engaging with the material. It’s like you’re a detective with your magnifying glass out, looking for clues and searching for answers.
#8: Self-Testing
There are a bunch of different ways to review your notes, and we’ve already touched on several with fill-in-the-blanks, card sorting strategies, and asking questions. Another technique for making this more interactive is to conduct self-testing on yourself.
Instead of just passively reading through your notes and hoping that rote memorization carries you through, take a more active role in your recall process. Test yourself on the big picture concepts as well as the little details. Write out a mock essay describing everything you can possibly remember from the material. Or if you prefer verbal methods, record yourself talking about it. Create an infographic from memory. Try to explain it to a friend.
The point is to involve yourself more in your own study process.
#9: Collaborate With Peers
If interacting with your notes yourself isn’t exciting enough for you, feel free to pull in peers, friends, or family. Having discussions about the content is a powerful way to explore perspectives and connections that you might not have made yourself.
Get together with your peers and create a summary of the content, being sure to include everyone’s diverse perspectives. Together, you could create a video collaboration, a podcast, an app, or even a game. Write a script on the topic and film it together; if it’s an abstract topic, try to make it concrete with an allegory.
The best way to do this would be in person, but you can also collaborate over email, text, a phone call, social media, video meetings, collaborative documents, and discussion boards.
Talking with others will not only give and teach you alternative perspectives and be fun, but it will also be more likely to spark enthusiasm for the topic. There’s always something interesting to be pulled out of a subject, but sometimes you need a bit of help to do so!
#10: Apply Learning
The whole point of taking good notes is to learn something well enough that you can apply it. Whether you’re applying it to an exam, the workplace, or your life, application is where knowledge comes to life. It’s the ultimate interaction technique — the one we’ve all been waiting for!
You can apply your learning to some of the activities mentioned in the previous section, such as by making a podcast, website, or YouTube channel where you share this knowledge with others. Maybe some of the questions you pulled out of the material really intrigued you, and inspired you to start a blog diving deeper into those questions. Maybe you’re going to give a presentation on what you learned in class or write a paper on it.
There are countless ways that knowledge can be applied, both creatively and productively (and quite often both). No matter what you are inspired to do with the information in your notes, “doing” is itself an interaction. You’ll find immense satisfaction in this kind of interaction, because you’ll be engaging with the world at large and with the people around you, bringing value to their lives through what you’ve learned.
Whether it’s a small group of people around you or a global audience via the internet, the people you touch will be impacted one way or another. Take all of that intentionality and care that you put into your note-taking and apply the same level of dedication to how you apply your new knowledge to the world around you. With great knowledge comes great responsibility.
Conclusion
The credits have rolled, and the lights are slowly coming back on. You blink, still feeling the effects of that 3-D experience. Your mind, emotions, and body have all participated in absorbing the data that was thrown at you during the film. You may or may not remember all of the plot details, but you’ll remember the key points in the film when a blaster was firing at your head (sorry, that’s the Star Wars universe, not GotG).
The point is that interaction makes a difference. It engages you more completely in the subject, even to the point of immersion. This in turn encourages higher critical thinking and pattern recognition, which results in all-around focus and better comprehension of the material. And that, in turn, helps with improving your retention.
As for the techniques, we discussed writing your notes instead of typing them, as this will activate more regions of your brain by requiring motor skills and spatial awareness. Chunking content is the practice of grouping items together to make them easier to remember. Fill-in-the-blank can be a great tool for reviewing and can be made much more intensive than it first sounds. Similarly, you can color in and label diagrams.
Cards can be used for all sorts of things, many of which are variations on sorting them. Matching games are fun and also a touch nostalgic, which is never a bad thing. Visuals of any kind are going to draw you into deeper interaction with the material, whether you’re making the visual or looking at it.
You can and should ask questions at any point before, during, and after taking notes. Remember, there’s never a dumb question. Self-testing is a great way to get yourself to interact with your notes in all manner of ways. Similarly, the options are endless for collaborating with peers—everything from podcasts to making a short film together.
The cherry on top of making your notes interactive is to apply your learning in a constructive manner. Not only are you interacting with the material, but you are bringing the material to the world in a positive manner. Now that, my friend, is a galaxy worth exploring.
Alright, all you digital nomads and curious learners out there, let’s wrap this thing up and cement those key concepts. Remember, we’re not just jotting down notes anymore; we’re revolutionizing the notetaking process, one idea at a time. And it’s not as hard as it sounds. You’ve got the power of technology at your fingertips, with various digital tools, laptops, and online resources making it all a breeze.
Dive into the world of visual note-taking, mind mapping, or the classic Cornell method, for starters. Make those lecture slides pop with pictures, diagrams, and other forms of graphic organizers. Throw in some color coding with your pens if you’re feeling artsy, or switch to the outline method for a more logical arrangement. You’ve got to make those lessons your own. Want to bring some real life to your notes? Add images, draw up charts, or just jot down examples that you can relate to.
Creating your own note-taking method is almost like modeling a little universe of knowledge. Make it interactive by getting other students involved. Maybe it’s a shared document where students write and comment on new notes, or maybe you’re in a group comparing two different parts of the lesson, or maybe you’re forming pairs to determine who’s got the most important information.
Don’t shy away from templates either; they can be a lifeline when you’re in a rush or having trouble organizing. You can always add your own touch by modifying the template as per your needs. It’s all about developing the ability to identify, categorize, and arrange information in a way that makes sense to you.
The objective? To build connections between different topics, analyze complex ideas, and most importantly, make sure you don’t miss any critical points. With better understanding and recall as your endgame, your note-taking skills are about to skyrocket, whether you’re preparing for college or just want to optimize your productivity.
And remember, taking notes isn’t a chore. It’s a way to record and celebrate the journey of learning, so make it your own and enjoy the ride. Now go forth and conquer that pile of notes with all these proven strategies and general tips. Happy studying!