I’m sitting here reading my homework assignment for the evening (on the Gunpowder Empires) and while reading I’m taking notes via Evernote, in the assigned notebook which is the name of this semesters class. The title of my note is “Wk 2 – Reading Notes” and I’m bulleting points I want to remember and italicizing my thoughts when I have them among this list of notes.
It is at this point I think to myself “Wow, I’m reading my homework online. Taking my notes online. Keeping my notes together online.”
When I decided to go back to school one of the first things I did was buy a notebook. And for the first year and a half I’ve done what I’ve always done when it comes to school: write my notes out. And since I’m a writer, writing things helped a lot more than opening a word document and typing them out.
My have times changed.
But why?
Excellent question.
The first step into changing my studying habits was the fact that all the classes I’ve had save one had their textbooks or reading materials online. This already was a huge wrench in my learning because I’m a highlighter and note-taker. Having my reading done online took me a while getting used to. About three months later, my textbook app allowed for highlighting and note-taking, like Kindle, and that made things a little easier.
Since my reading assignments were online, I found myself forgetting my notebook at home. There were times when I would haul my notebook to work, thinking I’d have to time to get some studying done only to not have that time. Or, there were times when I thought I wouldn’t have time to study, leave my notebook at home, only to find I had time to study but no notes. As you can imagine, this got a little frustrating, especially since I could use my textbooks online with minor notes. Slowly, I started training myself to take typed notes. And this slowly migrated over to Evernote because taking notes within an online program was so much easier than typing them on my computer in a word document, saving it, then uploading it so I could view it when I wanted.
Now, two and half years later, I’m fully in digital mode. Once in a while I’ll print out my notes or rubrics (I still always print out my syllabus), but more often than not I’ll view it online.
And I just had to write a post about this. We’re in the digital age and it amazes me at how much things have changed, with even in as little time as two years.