4 ms·

I've seen issues in meetings with this too. It's great for follow-up to be typing notes in the meeting, but it takes a lot of discipline for it not to devolve,

I've seen issues in meetings with this too. It's great for follow-up to be typing notes in the meeting, but it takes a lot of discipline for it not to devolve, and it's tough on speakers to discuss when everyone else is heads down.

existencebox 12y ago
I personally would be absolutely hamstrung without a laptop in meetings. My own handwriting is notoriously messy (I am only to blame for not practicing it enough to be any good, but that's almost a tradeoff for working in front of a computer nearly 24/7) and FAR slower than typing. I'm also unable to use text editor style shortcuts,reformat after the fact for clarity, or readily keep track off/move around documents. I found the exact things they claimed happened to laptop note takers, being a 'zombie', to be what happened when I tried to take notes by hand. This also doesn't convince me when taken in concert that when aggressively pushed onto the "YOU MUST TAKE PHYSICAL NOTES WITH NO DISTRACTIONS" bandwagon for most of my primary schooling, which was, to put it lightly, less than successful. This overly rambly anecdote should serve to illustrate not that I think laptops are "the right answer", but getting rid of them unilaterally will really harm those who actually have learned to incorporate them into a useful workflow. Why not address some more root causes, e.g. why engagement is so low? Facebook doesn't "force" you to browse it, and maybe I'm acting snoody in this, but there are certainly classes that I wouldn't be caught playing my favorite video games during for the subject matter being so interesting.
- DanBC 12y ago
  The people in the meeting should be participating in the meeting. The meeting needs a fast and accurate note taker to shorthand or type what everyone is saying and distribute those notes. That leaves you free to make the important notes and mark your action points. (This can be paper or laptop).
  - mathattack 12y ago
    Is the optimal situation where everyone can see what the note-taker is writing? Has anyone done this? To stay engaged, I've used the scrawl now and type later method, which means the notes never get out early enough. They do allow me to reflect on them though.
- Htsthbjig 12y ago
  The problem with laptops is keyboard noise. Compare note taking with keyboard typing in a class with several dozen people and you will see noise is a big problem if you are the teacher. I personally believe the best solution is audio record anything the teacher says, automatically transcribe it and just draw diagrams and stuff. But it will take some time before people start doing it.
  - existencebox 12y ago
    I realize this is one of the "better" examples, but it's certainly close to home for HN, but would you really argue that recorded audio and drawn diagrams are more useful for CS/algorithms courses than some typed snippets and pseudocode? That was at least where having a laptop in class really paid off for me.
    - BruceIV 12y ago
      Different people process information differently; for me seeing an abstract diagram of say, a B-Tree, would be more useful than a pseudo-code overview of the structure (at least first - the code might be useful once I had an grasp of the idea from the diagram). That's just me, though, different people learn differently.

existencebox 12y ago

I personally would be absolutely hamstrung without a laptop in meetings. My own handwriting is notoriously messy (I am only to blame for not practicing it enough to be any good, but that's almost a tradeoff for working in front of a computer nearly 24/7) and FAR slower than typing. I'm also unable to use text editor style shortcuts,reformat after the fact for clarity, or readily keep track off/move around documents. I found the exact things they claimed happened to laptop note takers, being a 'zombie', to be what happened when I tried to take notes by hand. This also doesn't convince me when taken in concert that when aggressively pushed onto the "YOU MUST TAKE PHYSICAL NOTES WITH NO DISTRACTIONS" bandwagon for most of my primary schooling, which was, to put it lightly, less than successful. This overly rambly anecdote should serve to illustrate not that I think laptops are "the right answer", but getting rid of them unilaterally will really harm those who actually have learned to incorporate them into a useful workflow. Why not address some more root causes, e.g. why engagement is so low? Facebook doesn't "force" you to browse it, and maybe I'm acting snoody in this, but there are certainly classes that I wouldn't be caught playing my favorite video games during for the subject matter being so interesting.

DanBC 12y ago
The people in the meeting should be participating in the meeting. The meeting needs a fast and accurate note taker to shorthand or type what everyone is saying and distribute those notes. That leaves you free to make the important notes and mark your action points. (This can be paper or laptop).
- mathattack 12y ago
  Is the optimal situation where everyone can see what the note-taker is writing? Has anyone done this? To stay engaged, I've used the scrawl now and type later method, which means the notes never get out early enough. They do allow me to reflect on them though.
Htsthbjig 12y ago
The problem with laptops is keyboard noise. Compare note taking with keyboard typing in a class with several dozen people and you will see noise is a big problem if you are the teacher. I personally believe the best solution is audio record anything the teacher says, automatically transcribe it and just draw diagrams and stuff. But it will take some time before people start doing it.
- existencebox 12y ago
  I realize this is one of the "better" examples, but it's certainly close to home for HN, but would you really argue that recorded audio and drawn diagrams are more useful for CS/algorithms courses than some typed snippets and pseudocode? That was at least where having a laptop in class really paid off for me.
  - BruceIV 12y ago
    Different people process information differently; for me seeing an abstract diagram of say, a B-Tree, would be more useful than a pseudo-code overview of the structure (at least first - the code might be useful once I had an grasp of the idea from the diagram). That's just me, though, different people learn differently.