Taking Notes
We all take notes during lectures; I've got friends who practically pen down everything the lecturer says and others who merely fills up blanks in the notes. I'm pretty sure neither constitutes note taking so I decided to explore what taking notes mean in education and learning. My questions was; how do you take notes that would benefit you in learning the stuff of interest?
Do it right
Lectures
At lectures, I found that the best was stick to the stuff given, filling in blanks wherever necessary and taking note of things not mentioned in the notes given. Don't allow the note-taking to distract you from learning during the lecture. Listening to the teacher and observing the projected slides or images or even looking at the demonstrations that the lecturers are showing are way more important than getting the notes down. The fact is that you're going to remember things more clearly when you focus and not when you write them down. Of course, information locked in paper has their kind of permanence but then you're compromising on some subtle details in those information if you're trying to get down everything during the lecture.
I believe that any knowledge or information impressed upon the mind in the form of the booming voice of a lecturer or the visual memory of a live demonstration in the lecture hall of an experiment would be way stronger than something you try to memorise off a sheet of paper. Besides, these strong impressions tied to your lecturers, professors and tutors would give you the confidence in the information you manage to lock within your mind. Information you read off notes or memorise from textbook would provide less confidence because you would have doubts about your own means of interpretation or your reading of the stuff when you're at exam situation.
Revision
Most people I know don't take notes during revisions. Revisions are the time to read through notes you've written, they say. Wrong! The thing about writing notes is that it's not so much for your reading pleasure later but for the act of doing it. The act of writing notes (in the right way, a point to be elaborated later) actually helps you absorb and remember the concepts. The idea is to transfer facts and knowledge into your mind and not on to another piece of paper. The paraphasing, the need to look up dictionaries for technical terms you're unsure about, the work involved in finding out what each concept or theory seeks to explain are all part of the process of note-writing when you're revising for your exams or tests and these are exactly the same things that will contribute to your learning.
And when you take notes during revision, synthesize materials and knowledge you obtain from different sources - the textbooks, the reference materials, your readings, lecture notes and the informal stuff you've written down yourself. Write things down because they guide you to learn the concept/subject in question and not because they've been printed on the sources where you try to copy them from.
The Right Way
After being a student for so many years, I've come to believe that there's a 'right' way to take notes. First, take down only concise materials and not chunks off textbooks, readings and lecture notes. Next, write only things you understand and find out things that you don't during the process of note taking. In other words, get beside a computer and google stuff you're unsure about as you try to take notes from your readings and so on. Just don't become distracted by the computer and end up being on Facebook. Finally, draw diagrams whenever necessary but don't get too concerned with trying to beautify your notes and take hours sketching brilliant artworks - the whole point is to practice applying, penning the stuff you learn.
A final note is that your notes should ideally be comprehended only by people who are already familiar with the things taught in class or have already read through everything that you've read to compile the information. Your notes should not be a duplicate of everything explained on your lectures and end up becoming another textbook of sorts.