Even though I’ve got nine years of AP Euro teaching under my belt, I still feel that my content knowledge needs support. Effective history teaching requires a stone-cold grip on the facts, complimented with a deep reserve of human interest and “rest of the story” anecdotes. Even teachers who have been at the game for more than twenty years have to prepare for classes by reviewing content.
I spent a large part of the summer of 1997 typing a 167-page magnum opus 
summary of Palmer’s History of the Modern World. Even a conservative estimate would put that project at over 250 hours of work. That’s quite an investment. But not too great for a second year teacher who embarking on the AP Euro course without ever haven taken the course himself. The problem is that fruit of that labor is practically useless to me now. In my current work environment, I don’t have the time to use this notebook.
But I spend more than two hours in my car every day. And that is where I found the solution to this problem.
In the comfort of my own couch, I re-read section’s of Palmer’s book, rediscovering its superb writing and cogent, organized format. But this time I read it wearing a headset, plugged into a digital voice recorder. 
Speaking notes instead of writing them takes less than a third the time. It allows you to copy parts of it by simply reading passages outloud. If your learning style is more auditory and verbal than text-based, recorded notes are going to be much more effective.
This is a great tool for students. With a $10 microphone, a free copy of Audacity and their PC at home, they can “take notes” that can be loaded directly onto their mp3 players. Yes, it will seem strange to them at first. Yes, their peers may make fun of them. But there are many stressed-out AP students who need a better way to learn the material. And they can do it at the speed of sound.
Actually we came across an instance where students who were allowed to listen to their mp3 players during tests in certain classes (I’m not sure why their teacher allowed this in the first place) were found listening to the notes that they had recorded as mp3 files during the actual test! As a result it is a school rule to not allow students to listen to mp3 players during classes (which is common sense to me!!!)
I do agree with you that this could be a beneficial learning method for a lot of kids, especially for those that learn best through auditory means. I hope that over time, more and more kids use technology to improve their study skills instead of just spending hours in chat rooms or IMing their peers.
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Maybe the iPod allowing teacher subscribed to the belief that listening to music boosts your brain’s capacity. Do you think they were listening to Mozart?
Audio recording can also be used as an proofeading tool. Although students can upload their essays to something like Spoken Text and listen to their writing, it may be more effective to require that they read it out loud and record it themselves. Chances are they will pick up a fair amount of the grammar mistakes and some of the more nonsensical statements as well. This is not a novel idea, according to his law partner (William Herdon), Abraham Lincoln said that he “wrote by ear”. “When I have put my thoughts on paper, I read it aloud, and if it sounds all right, I just let it pass.”
I’m glad the school did not go overboard and put a total ban on iPods. I hate to do any free advertising for them, but its use as a learning tool is more than we expect. How many “teach savvy” kids know that they can download Wikipedia to their iPod? If that isn’t enough, OpenCulture has another ten ways to use the iPod in school. David Baugh and Tony Vincent have even more.
That is definitely an interesting approach to note-taking, which I believe could be even more effective at the college level. Granted, the ideal and experienced college reader has learned the art of skimming, but where is the recall in that? The overall goal is to learn the material of course, so why not present it in as many ways as possible. Isn’t one of the major tenets of teacher education learning about Howard Gardner and his theory of Multiple Intelligences?
Just thinking in the college mindset, I had a reading to do, this past semester, of 140 pages. Now, this reading was on the syllabus that was given at the beginning of the year, however, the professor only mentioned that they would be handouts, so on Tuesday (the reading was due on Thursday) the teacher announces that she has finally posted the links to the documents online. This is when we, the students, discovered the reading was 140 pages.
Now consider a schedule like this. This was a 3:30-5:00 class period. I had work the next day from 9:00am-1:00pm and class from 1:10-4:20. Then class on Thursday again from 8:00-12:30 and then the class where the reading was due at 3:30. On top of everything else that I had to do, a 140 page reading, complete with highlights, notes, questions and discussion topics, is next to impossible. The time investment alone is close to 5-6 hours. (I don’t care that they say college is all about time management, there are just some things that you cannot avoid and insane assignments such as those are the ones that cause college students to say, “Screw this.” and nap.
Anyways, the point is, with technology such as this, it would be simple and realistic to cut the time in half, read silently, and then at important passages, make comments, or read the passages. Then, with this all stored on a computer (presumably a laptop), students can then have all of their materials on the computer and be able to readily access it.
Great idea and one that will surely be implemented by me.
Another issue that can be raised from this is the usability of laptops in a classroom, most importantly college and high school ones. I was doing a college student panel one day for my old high school, and one thing that was brought up by a high school student was note taking in college. He said that he struggled even in high school to take efficient and effective notes in high school by hand. Curiously, my first question to him was how much he was on a computer. He answered almost all the time that he was not in school. My suggestion then was to bring a laptop to classes and take notes that way. He really liked the idea. I don’t know if he ever did that, but little things like that would help students’ lives easier and would help make the laptop an more powerful educational tool.
I found your site while looking for answers to help our 17y.o. son who loves history and English, has tested in the gifted range, but is horrible at studying and taking notes. He says he can not listen to a lecture and write notes, he misses too much. But without notes, he can not pass tests at this level. (he says the same about reading and taking notes). We’ve tried the audio version, but in high school, this is a lot of hours of listening to notes.
I’m trying to encourage him to fill out “Cornell” style notes from the text. But what about lectures.
Any suggestions appreciated!
Lynne
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I support this new idea on how students learn. However, because of recording, there’s a tendency that students will no longer listen in class, right?