Take Notes Like You Need Them - Part 2

1. Welcome: hi and welcome to take notes like You need them? Part two. I am Nina Yuzhou and instructional designer, and I will be teaching this class. This glass was created for anyone who's interested in exploring or in using digital devices to take notes. Beginners to experience. There's something here for everyone, so no previous experience is necessary. By the end of this class, you will be able to summarize ideas very important and necessary skill for any note taker, you will be able to select a digital environment or platform for note taking. Based on what you want to accomplish. There will be a range of them and whether they're for personal use. Like for record keeping your journaling or a project or sharing with others through teaching your public speaking. And you will apply at least three strategies to a final project with a sample of your digital note that you can use is an effective in the last day in document. Before we begin, I want to share a brief story with you. Ah, few years ago, I found myself temporarily impaired on the dominant side of my body and that limited my movements, especially writing and consequently taking notes. So I worked around that limitation by transcribing my notes. And then I got around that by transcribing them in chunks and using more paper. But then after that, I started working with some applications that allowed me to record and then record also the written parts of those notes in them. And I can say now 50% of my note taking happens on paper and the other 50% in the digital environment. So I want to share with you what I know and what has helped me in the last several years. Let's get started. 2. Tools and Final Project: When I take digital notes, I do it on three different devices, and that allows me to sink my work among them. That is because I start and continue my work in completely different places and sometimes the different times as well. So, for example, I always have my smart phone on me, but I don't necessarily have my tablet on me. And those are the two main devices that I keep going to and from when I'm taking digital notes. Sometimes if the work requires internal collaboration, if I'm working on a group project, I will use a Google doc or Google sheet to record overall ideas. But I review my notes, and then I transfer them to the note taking space that will be most helpful to me and digital or it or paper. But in this case, I will choose which application. I want them to live permanently afterwards. So most often, though, I rely on three applications depending on how the notes are being used. Whether therefore, just recording, taking notes, sharing notes or just uh, creating those notes offering those notes. I will favor the tablet only because there is just more real estate available But as far as behaviors go, they are the same, and they behave the same on either platform on either device. I do take care of my stylist the same way I take care of my pencils and ink. They each have a case to keep them fresh and to extend their life in my hands. The tips them to be worn off a little bit more quickly if they're constantly rubbing against backpacks or work bags or hard rough surfaces. The ones the two ones that I work with the most are these two. This one here is a bamboo stylists, and this one here is a paper 53 stylus. The paper, 53 works with an app of the same name, and you have the ability to Bluetooth, the Penn where the application and there some extra features. But even if you do not connected, it still works just as well. Right now, this one here is not connected. And one thing that I wanted to call your attention to is with the paper 53 stylist Just back out here little bit. You actually do need to charge every once in a while or when it runs out of battery. That helps, of course, the blue to connection work. And the way you do it is if you have a regular apple charger, you use this part over here and you just connect it. There's a little light that shows up over here. It's orange when you start, and then when you finish it, just turn screen. I usually use my smartphone, which is an iPhone eight right now, and the iPad Air two. Every strategy that I recommend here is applicability to a PC or an android device. These applications that I use are only available on the IOS environment, but sometimes on both and strategies that are always platform and operating system agnostic . Most features, though, are available on note taking applications across devices. The most important part of this class is on using strategies that will make you an efficient note taker and a confident thinker and speaker using that digital environment. A lot of those behaviors they are very similar from operating system to operating system. If you see a feature that you like, you sure will know then what to look for and what questions to ask when you're shopping around for an application to use for your final project, you will post a screenshot or a digital note that you have taken during this class. You can also post what you create during that flash activity at the end of this class. A flash activity is an exercise that you can complete while watching a clip. During the class, we will start together, but then I will fade into the black background and you will be on your own. The goal is really to have a first try at using some of the recommendations that you learn about in this class. You may be using the same application that I'm that I'm recommending, or you may be using something different. It's a lot of fun, and it's not a one size fits all with one answer. One right answer only. And once you post the results, we can always learn from one another. All right, so in this clip we learned about the devices and writing tools that I used to take digital notes. You also now know about flash activity and the final project. So next we will look at who takes digital notes and why people take digital notes 3. Who and Why: okay, lets briefly talk about who takes digital notes and why they take digital notes. Typically, I see on the go people relying on digital note, taking more and more. But it can be really anyone they can be students. Professionals would tend several meetings during the day conference goers, bloggers, YouTubers, traveling people, folks who are more comfortable in the digital environment than the paper environment. Physicians will walk around all day visiting different patients, people who have motor limitations, people who need to dictate notes and more that I'm not mentioning here and why. Because the digital environment is portable, there is a lot less to carry around, and it offers one feature that is quite handy when you're working on something that needs a group of people to make this work grow over time. It's the ability to collaborate and to update documents when you're on different schedules , different time zones or a different field altogether. So I have offered a short list of people who might need or want to take digital notes. Besides anyone. I have also addressed the why behind choosing to take notes in the digital environment. You may have thought of more that I have not mentioned, and that only makes the list longer and richer. Now let's begin by diving into strategies that I recommend using the applications that I mentioned in the last clip we're gonna be using Apple Notes, note ability and paper 53 before I close this clip, I would like to disclose that I am not benefiting in any shape or form or monetarily or otherwise by any from any of those three companies. This is something that I'm sharing with you from my own personal experience. I did go through a triage off literally hundreds of different applications, and those are the ones that I have been using the longest and with confidence about updates , changes and other features. If you want to follow along and take notes and your own device, all the better. 4. Strategies: all right, let's start talking about no taking strategies, Much like in Part one. We will see what they look like and how we can make the most of taking notes and these digital platforms. Let me just quickly summarize what we saw in part one, but I strongly encourage you to take that class as well if you want to expand this section . But the main strategies are chunk information. Individual blocks create visual signals to make important information Stand out. A good example is how use Sunny Brown's visual alphabet to create dynamic looking notes that will help me remember content and better prepare to share those notes. If I'm using them in a public form, for example, begin with lines, shapes and arrows and then expand from there. Leave empty spaces for changes notes to add later or to rearrange notes during review. This can come in really handy, especially afterwards. Use color to quickly direct your attention to important sections in those notes, especially when you're reviewing your notes and just remember this is not about the color. This is about creating opportunities for the content to be easily accessible. I recommend that you stay with one or two at the most Onley because the focus for me needs to really be on the notes themselves. Lastly, I recommend the use of templates for a recurring notes. If you're beginning to take notes and want to expand from there, you will find it very, very handy and very useful to have them around. You can create your own develop your own notation. Templates also helped develop your note taking voice and make changes as you become more and more confident in Chungking your notes over time. I now want to make a recommendation that makes special sense in the digital world. Design your solution first. In other words, start by thinking about what purpose your notes serve. Are the personal records to be used later? Are they about a meeting that I have every week and the structural looks the same? Are they going to be shared in a public forum later? Am I going to give a Ted talk and my am I'm giving a new inspirational speech to ah smaller audience after that? Then you find the technology that will support it and not the other way around. And the way to select the technologies to think about how you can best keep your notes or share your notes without the technology being in the way or being the main focus of that event. In the next three clips, you will see the same note being built using three separate applications, so you have a point of comparison. So in this clip you heard about five main strategies that I use when I'm taking notes that will be demonstrated in this glasses. They will be illustrated as we as I build the notes for you, mainly to chunk information to create visual signals, to leave open spaces in your notes to use color to direct your eyes, two sections of you notes. And finally, to use templates to pre load your digital environment or to help with practice. The next three clips will demonstrate digital note taking using those three APS Apple notes , note ability and paper. 53 5. Apple Notes: for the purpose of this class. I took notes and I did not form at them. I did not review them with colors and shapes and arrows. There's just, very preliminarily, speaking, there some lines, and these need to be shifted to the left. Over here is you see that? And I just wanted to share this with you to show you where what the source note will be for the next three clips when we talk about taking notes using Apple notes, note ability and paper. 53. Let's start with Apple notes. It's the simplest of them all. And this is what it looks like for those of you who are new to the apple environment. And once you fire it up, your notes will be loaded here on the left, and whatever you have here will be already here on the right. Let's start a new note. First of all, I click on this little air over here that has a pin on a little square, and I fire a new note. Once you coming to the note, you can actually get rid of the left hand side menu and you can go, um, a tear up or you you could have just left it there. It's completely up to you. But once you are in here, you can see that the keyboard gets fired right away. Unless you have a Bluetooth keyboard and you have a few options, you can start a table, and you can then add columns. You can add a call him or you can delete a column. If you click on these little ellipsis, you can add a roadie leader row, so either way you can add to it. But if you don't want that, you can just delete the table altogether. You actually have a choice of type of fonts that you can use. You conform at it, and then you have these three icons over here where this one here with a check mark check mark. It actually allows you to create to create, ah, to create bulleted lists with that very special icon. And what it does is you can actually check things off a list. It's fairly interactive, so let's let's backtrack some steps here. Let's select everything. I will select all and then delete it because I don't need it. And if you click on this markup area over here. It gives you actually quite a few ways to take notes. This pencil over here allows you to actually write a note. If you want, you can change the color of your marker here. One thing that you can also do is you can actually highlight a note. You can use that part over here, so there are a number of things you can do just to take notes. Oh, are even if it's just a quick draft, you also can erase the note you Congar over here because it is not a drawing at per se, it will. Any part off a mark that you touched, it will erase the whole thing, and that's pretty much about it. For For this, you can undo, you can redo and you can just get out of the markup area and then start typing your notes the way you normally would. So but notice that now that this this notes application up comes actually with the ability to collaborate with other people, you can invite people to either send them the link, send them an email or a message, and you can actually invite them to collaborate on this document with you. That's pretty cool. So, as you can see, I'm finishing this note over here. I will select all of this word and I want to. Just since I'm wrapping it up with it, I'm gonna just make it a little bit more important than the rest and different as well. And if you see the whole note, it's a very short note. But the table scrolls, you can see that the table doesn't close you to the right. And it is sort of like a clue that the table needs to be scroll to the right because there is more information to be read. So all I know it does a decent enough job the way I used to, um, to indented these things to the writer left, for example, these letters when they're in the box, I left them here on purpose. You can see that the numbers are sent it to the left. There's no way for us to send our line it to the middle, to the center or to the far right. You have to manually do this. So the way to do this in notes is you hold your finger down the magnifying glass comes up and you put the cursor exactly where you want it to be. And you just tap the space bar until you actually find the spot where you want it to be. And I'll do the same with numbers two and three was their centered. You can see that I brought the numbers to the center just to help a line and, you know, call my eyes, too, where the information is and it's sort of like distributes content line. A few indicators content the line, and this is just for the sake of sampling. Ah, note taking. Let's see if this will allow me to indentured to the right a little bit. You can see that it doesn't quite align with sample note. So then it's this, you know, it's this constant, sort of like tug of war to find a happy medium. It is a very rudimentary note taking application, but it does a fairly decent job at at taking notes. I wouldn't I wouldn't necessarily take notes live with this application. I would favor the other two that we're going to talk about shortly, but it does a decent job. If it is somebody is just giving you a phone number and address and maybe a set of instructions about something. You can actually get it. Get it done. And one thing that I wanted to show is if you decided to actually add those cool features here from the markup area, The one thing that it doesn't do is it will not allow you to. Let's imagine I have the highlighter it's not. It never allows you to interface with a type written notes, so they're very separate. And once you touch the the surface or the portion of the note that you want to add that you want to use the markup tools, you can see that there is a There's a line that the application generates. Let me see if I zoom in a little bit. If it's easy to see there's a line here right here, it starts with a little dot so you can draw. Let's imagine. Let's see, Let me just go back here. Let's imagine that then the talk well, veer into talking about a number of people who are taking notes these days. But there's always that person who will never go into the digital space while others are all experimenting and trying something new, there's always someone else who won't. You can't quite incorporate this type of information and then add something that's type written here because it just won't allow you to do that. So if you leave the markup area, let's say that you want to type something here. It'll quickly find the next possible section, and then you can. You can type notes right here, but if you were to delete the notes to see where that will take you, it would not take you anywhere. Other than this. It'll highlight all the markup area, and if you want to delete it, then you can. At that point you can. And that's what I'm going to do just to illustrate that and goes back up here. You highlights the in the entire portion, and then you can delete it and go back to your notes. And you saw that quickly that the text that you had below it quickly took care of that empty space and scrolled things up for you. So all in all, it does a decent enough job, and it's OK, but that's not what I would use for for example, a conference or let alone to plan for a speaking engagement. Maybe if I can put my outline over here, that's for sure. That's a great way to do it, especially if I'm just carrying my phone with me, which I have done in the past. I've had outlines and I was speaking from the outline, but other than that, let's move on to the next application. 6. Notability - Part 1: All right now let's create that Notre. Take that note using note ability. As you can see right over here, this is what the icon looks like. I'm going to get it started. So let's start a brand new note and then write the notes that we wrote in the Apple Notes application in note ability. So just to refresh your memory, let's click over here. We start a new note and you notice Now I want to call your attention to the name of this note, so I'm going to call it sample note, and one way to do it is you just click right on it and you can just go to the far right here or deleted character by character, and you can type the name of the note and it'll show up right there, and it will save with that name with the date and time. You can also customize this leader, so the note starts with white. Take notes, so I will. I normally tend to let me just get rid of all these pages. I tend to actually handwrite all of my notes, and then I convert them to text. Let's go over here and let's just do this. Why, why? I take notes and I'll leave all of the styling for later. I will leave some space in case I decide to change something in the middle. But this is one reason this is the second reason that I identified. And then this is the third reason that that doesn't That doesn't look very good. Third reason. And, um, helps students who? I can't this because I'm going to convert to text. So no short writing helps students retrieve information. Retrieve information. A second reason is it's notes are also used and professionals settings to help people. You can see that it slides a little bit as I move the box so I can make some space just for myself and help help people solve problems and make decisions. One of the fundamental and almost universal gestures. Four. Note ability. Any time you want to move anything around on the campuses, you use two fingers and you move things around, up and down or even sideways. When when that's needed, it improves. This will always tells me this. This square over here corresponds exactly to the square over there, So if I want to really start my sentence over here. I will start to see how that corresponds to that. Um, it improves. Recall, and I will slide this down a little bit and judgment accuracy, if you can. I'm gonna move this a little bit. Oops. No accuracy. There was an extra leg over there, so I'm moving down over here. But maybe even for my own sense of organization, I I decided to get rid of this Oakland A plus sign. And I'm glad this is happening because you will see how you can just go in and out of those functions all the time. I will go back to my hand written pencil or pen, and I go back to my note. I would like to before I do that, I'm going to quickly change the color here. And I want to draw a line that separates. Now if I tend to hold, I draw the line and I hold it. It'll straighten the line out for me. So let me just do this one more time. I go over here and it will just make it a straight line. So if it's a little crooked, as I said before we can go over here, I can just attempt to make it to turn it a little bit. It's really great because it it will use increments and not snap to any portion of a pre measured part of the note. So there we go. It's a nice meet, little separation. I will draw another line using lines, shapes and arrows. And there's an interesting way to condense all of this information here. So I go back to Black over here, go back to my notes, bring it down and same thing. So there is one common understanding about all of these different weight, different functions of writing notes. Many mental processes occur simultaneously during note taking again. This is a This is a process where I will review the notes later and I will add as needed. But and I can see that this is not quite a line over here. If I feel too strongly about that, it's very easy, and I can always just go over here, put it a little bit in the middle. The reality is I might do that because I don't know that I will get to actually get it converted to type written depending on who I will share this with or if this is just for personal use. And and then there's the last portion of the note where they're four very distinct mental processes that the author calls our attention to and see hoops. Let's not do this was just suit you something like here and then deep. I think this is it. It's a good way to. And again, I'm just going to illustrate this to you because let's imagine that you want this aligned a little bit differently. You can just going and you that you go. So let's go back in here and back down here. And one of the things that the author says on these notes, the one of the mental processes, is one of the things that we do when we're taking notes is would be attention to the speaker. Another thing that we do is we understand we have to. In order to summarize the note, we have to understand the material so you see that there's a lot of just ah familiarity with the software because I have been using it for so long and with practice and the more you use it. Of course, the more you will, um, have these the mechanics down. Ah, the other one is to identify one of the things that we do when we're taking notes. Oops. Identify important information because we need to do sort of like that triage in our heads . But look at that. I actually I was trying to talk and write at the same time. Not good at that. I just came over here. It brought piece of that word. I will attempt to delete just that letter. It worked perfect. And I will just correct. No, I will go back to the pencil, identify the the other word was important, important words. And I will go down here and back over to the last column, and I will. And then the last one is to coordinate physical writing or typing of notes. And once all of this is accomplished, the question of the day is, and just to keep it consistent with the lines that I used before is, um this is really quite tilted. So I will go around here and I will try and make it a little bit whiter and there, and I will draw another line here. It's not really quite what I call straight. Let me just straighten this out. Just a tiny bit. Perfect. Better and the question of the day then becomes how do we find the balance between why we take the notes and then all the the balance among all the mental processes, all these four mental processes that we have happening at once? How do we find the balance while we're taking notes and to still keep the notes important and fresh and helpful? So the main question is how to find the balance. Great. And so once we're here, I will just do this Just one more time. Move it over this way. And there we go. We have we have just one page, I think worth of notes, just checking. Yet they always note ability always creates, Sort of like a buffer last page. Uh, I don't think it'll you can delete it, but it doesn't really in handwriting selection, Mosiuoa, it won't really allow you to do that. So two fingers I can go up and down. So then what do I do from here? Well, one of the strategies the content is chunked in pieces already. I have some lines and shapes. I don't have arrows, but I will add arrows right here because they they This happens from the note. I'm looking at my other notes. They happen actually as a continuum. And even though they they don't happen in isolation from one another, they do happen as a process and you keep going back and forth with all of them. So to illustrate this and then to remind myself that this is an important part of of what I need to say if I'm sharing these notes in a verbal foreign in a normal format, Um, that I will do that. So I come over here, let me just get rid of this just for the sake of having more real estate over here. And I will then draw arrows that go from one to the other, straightened out. I just add a little here and here and it allow me to add the's, and over here it's a very handy feature to have these lines straightened out, and then this is it. But let's imagine that I really want to push it a little bit, and I really, really, really want to have these turned into type Written texts really convert this to text 7. Notability - Part 2: they will do that. So I come over here, let me just get rid of this just for the sake of having more real estate over here. And I will then draw arrows that go from one to the other, straightened out. I just add a little here and here and it allow me to add the's. And over here it's a very handy feature to have these lines straightened out, and then this is it. But let's imagine that I really want to push it a little bit. And I really, really, really want to have these turned into type. Written texts really convert this to text, so we'll go over here, convert to text if you remember. If you convert the selection, it actually creates a no box for us. So I'm going to just go over here. Why take notes? Uh, it won't allow me to quite, ah, align my notes. And as you can see, it's sort of like it is a, um, a little bit of a time consuming process, but well worth our while. And I will. I believe, let's go over here. Let's then convert the second note to text. It's taking its time. And let's imagine that the information that the conversion has come up with is not really accurate. You can only always just click on it, and then you can correct it. Get rid of the keyboard. Convert selection. There's another another text box. I'm going to do this a little bit more quickly, and here we go. And you saw that. Are it automatically bumps to the text? Um, option. I'm going to do this again. Convert to text. It's a very handy way to start changing your text, and it's, uh right there. I'm gonna leave this here for now. It's well positioned. Maybe I want I use this little handle here to move the notes around this little lift up on the tough. And, um, I'm going to comfort the third note. There we go. And here we go. Great. That's exactly what I wrote. And once I text and so once we're here, let's imagine that I want this one to come to the middle just to be a little bit more centered. Same thing here, and I just want to do this here and then the judgment accuracy. I wanted to be centered that way. as well, so looks okay for now. I would probably spend a little bit more time on this. And I will just, um, over here, I'm going to select all and I will try to bump up the font a little bit. Just so it's the same size. It looked a little smaller than the other one. So, you know, they're all these tweaks that we need to to to go through. It's not letting me there. All right, so I think it looks pretty good and we can add as much or as little us as we want or need. And this is there you go. You can spend more time if you want to, then re create this note and then maybe posted in the projects area. All right, this is note ability for you and we. The one item that we need to get to is this recording item that will get to later. If you want to use the recording function in note ability, let's imagine that you want to have sort of like a mental note, but that's part of the recording. Or maybe you want to share a recording or an audio to share with someone else who may be cannot quite read the text. And if it's all hand written, maybe a screen reader will not pick up on what's written. And that will help. Also, because the recordings that are taking a note ability they were taken while you're developing something inevitability or or if the the screen is there's no action, then there's no action. But if you want someone to follow a certain process, the recording, the parts of what you drew will be faded out and they will be revealed as the recording, um, progresses. So let's let's do this live here. So let me just get a bigger, a bigger line, and I will start recording something that is a note that I am leaving, maybe for someone who will review this later. Hopes that just picked up on my finger. All right, so it starts right here. You see, there's a counter that started already, and here I go. I think that next time we designed this note instead of using instead of using one to and three for the first portion of the note, I would prefer that we use why, why and why those air three different reasons. They don't rank in any in any order, so I would prefer to have why y y And then for the second part of the note, instead of having a B, C and D. If she's talking about mental processes, we can actually have, um, just something from the visual alphabet. We can have something like this just to signal that they are that they have a category of their own and and there we go And this makes I think, better sense. Next time I stopped the recording over here and when this this part of the note is being played out lording, I simply click on this drop down menu and this appears I can play the recording. I can change the pace in the recording every time I click, but I will leave it at one time. The weight was recorded. I can skip every 10 seconds as it's playing, and I can also adjust the volume. I can also, um, I can also bluetooth it to another device. When I click over in the ellipses, it actually asked me if I want to. I have a note replay. I will turn this off I only need it to be played once. And if I want to manage my recordings, I go over here and there clearly to recordings. And if I only want to listen to the second recording, I can do that. And then when I click on edit, it lets me delete the recordings. It does not let me named the recordings by section off the notes. Yet we have sent that as a feature request to note ability and hopefully they'll listen to us. Done, gone. And now let's play the note and see what happens. It starts right here. You see, there's a counter that started already, and here I go. I think that next. So I'm gonna pause because when we turn, When I turned off note replay, it turned off the ability to replay the note as it happened. So I'm gonna go back over here and I'm gonna click this back on in the minute I do that, you see that all the content is faded away because that portion of the recording has not is not linked to any action that has taken place in the recording itself. So you really have a choice. So I would prefer to leave it on for this note because I really want the person who is going to read this to follow along and not have everything in front of him or her at once. So let me It's time we designed this note instead of using instead of using one to and three for the first portion of the note, I would prefer that we use Why, Why and why. All right, we really don't need to listen to the whole note. You listen to it once, but you get you get the idea off how the recording can be so, so useful when you use it in a note ability. 8. Paper 53: all right, the third application that I would like to share with you. That's part of my digital suite of applications that I go back and forth with its called paper 53. This is the icon that stands for a paper 53. I'm going to click on it so I can launch it. A few things about paper 53 is that it is a paid up, like the others, but it is on a membership model, and I have used it for two, almost three years now. I'm very, very happy with the the product. It does have limitations like any other, and I use it to supplement some of what note ability cannot do because it is a drawing apso . Sometimes if I need something that note ability can't quite do, I will do it over here, and then I will export this into note ability and and then I can pick it up from there. So one of the things that paper Fist 53 does is that you can actually keep a number of notebooks. As you can see, I can have so many different ones. Each one can hold a different subject or But let's let me open this, will you can. You can choose covers for it. You can draw. You can bring a cover, say, from your photo album for this recipe book, for example, or you can just use one of their default covers. So if I click on this, it'll open. Obviously, A have working on this before. And as you can see all of the notes here are hand written notes. No paper. 53 can add some type written notes. That's great. It does not. You cannot type inside the note just like you saw in note ability. It's in a different format, but this meets my needs for what I need. You can see that I I can easily just hand write notes. It does give me the ability to zoom in and out so I can easily, just again two fingers that universal gesture to move things around on a on a screen. I keep going from one to the other. If I need to zoom out, I just spin shit out and they pinch it out one more time to go back to book mode. I still have some pages left. I can always add more pages and you can see that my pages air are numbered on the corner. I tend to use the last page and I keep adding pages if I need two. All right, here we are. I usually like to have my notes. The lines really help me. I'm not very good at writing. Without the lines on the paper, I will choose the no card for now. This doesn't look very good. I'm gonna click on Done. I will then choose the to have the white background so I can see the lines a little bit better, and I will then start writing my notes. One of the things that I've noticed is even though the APP says it has the the ability to ignore the poem of you hand. It doesn't. If I start writing it, will he immediately pick something up here that I can't write? But then it's picking something up down here some dots. And so what? I typically dio let me just quickly delete this or ah, let me. What I do is I typically just zoom in and then I bring the note down. That's closer to this part of the support that I have. That's a great tip, by the way, because it it's so to me. I really need the support when I'm writing my notes. So I will right here. Simple sample note and bring it back. And if it's centered, that's great. If it's not, it would use the scissors and then I can move this around. But I'll actually just move this the title to the very, very top, and I will continue and you can watch me work here. - I know that we have this note in front of us. I'm going to explain a little bit about the process or the strategies that I used in order to write this note. The first thing that I used were chunks of information, and you can, if you can tell you can see that they're chunked like this. And there's another chunk over here. I will make this even more purposeful if I separate them with lines, shapes or arrows. So the first thing that I'm going to do first is actually two. Separate this title over here from the rest of the note to make it just a little bit more to give it a little bit of space. I purposefully left space here when I was taking notes. You can see that there's empty space here. Empty space here in case I need to add something an error or a line or something later, I will. Now. One of the things that paper 53 does really well is it creates shapes for me that are that are very easy to draw. And I'm not a something that will help my note just come to life. A little bit will be to just use the filler tool to create some quick colors and and add to the note as well. I don't like using more than two colors. All stay with this just for so see all of a sudden, the three wise or right there, and I can just quickly gravitate to each one of them, and especially if I use this note to prepare, I don't even need to be going back to them. I just need to remember that there three different reasons behind taking notes from this particular talk, and I will take advantage of that. And maybe I might add the that filler tool. I could add something crazy like that. But I will not because it's not going to really help in order to use color in a note, it really has to add value. So one of the things that I will do is I might just draw a quick line here just to separate these notes and to this didn't go so well. Actually, one of the things what I could do here is to lightly move this to the right just a tiny bit . So I don't use that word, and I will go back to the filler tool. The yellow is still active here, and I can just quickly with the same sort of like the same size and all of a sudden it looks already separated and it looks like they're they're easier for me to refer to. So that's one strategy is the chunks, lines, shapes and arrows are here. I purposefully left something out. I wanted to add some arrows right from the wise, down to the different thinking here, which is that the speaker said that meant many many mental processes occur simultaneously during note taking, and one of the things that I do want to do is to shift this a little bit to the left. I have all of this space left here, and this is all squeezed to the right. So I will do just that right now using the scissors. Hopefully, it'll allow me to do that. Yes. Yeah. So I can then have a note, B uh, there. And I will go back to my palette here and the back to the sketch tool. Let's see if I can get the same blue that I had before I will. Now I will erase this line over here, and instead of having this line, I will have arrows. That points to that realization that they're all these reasons for us to take notes. But we still need to remember that it is sort of like a juggling act with all all of those different mental processes that need to be happening all at once simultaneously. So I'm going to come over here with the sketch tool and one of the things that in paper 53 you can do very easily is if you draw a line and you hold onto it, it will give you an option. Once you let go, it will give you an option to accept the option to if you click on either end when those arrows air activated to add in Arrowhead on either end or in both ends of the line. So let's just go back. I'll go back here because it only stays there for so long. I want that aero to be here and I want this error to be here and I will try to then use many one over here just for the sake of consistency. There's not a whole lot of space here and I will use that. And I think that works pretty well. And here is the note and I will Now let's I Maybe I looked at the title over here and we don't need that sample, no title anymore, so I can actually get this out of my way. And the other thing that I can do to is to make the title stand out a little bit more up there where it belongs and that's it. We have a very brief note, quick note, concise note, very easy to go back to very easy to refer to without having to read and to prepare myself to then share this out in a meeting 9. Develop Your Own Notation: okay, now that you have explored the many different ways to bring your notes to life using a variety of strategies, how about taking that next step and developing your own notation? How about developing templates of your own to meet your needs? So using some pre designed notes is something that I commonly used for for no taking in familiar setting. So, for example, if it's a recurring meeting or or maybe that has a familiar outcome, will we always end up with parking lot items to be picked up the next time? It also gives me the freedom to think about what I need, and and I can design it for my own purpose and not try to squeeze into someone else's idea of what you are. I need So, for example, if I have continuously scheduled open meeting a status meeting if you're a therapist and you see patients and you have your meeting structured in a certain familiar way, public speaking talk. So templates are especially helpful when you're trying to take notes in large amounts. If you are a journalist and you may, you may want to do this. You may know that there's certain things that you need to share with your audience first, who are a physician? You might want to do this. If you were an attorney, you might want to use preloaded templates into you notes. So in this section, I mentioned some benefits for using templates and to creating your own notation. I demonstrated some of those and just really develop your notation based on what you need. No taking strategies will guide this process. And you will use templates that are designed by you as often or as little as you need. They keep notes predictable and easy to navigate. Now, let's look at what we do with all the notes we take and how we can find them. We're gonna call this file management. 10. File Management: Okay, now let's talk about file management. What happens to all those notes when you actually need them? Each application offers a different way to organize them. So let's let's look at each per application. That's for the Apple Notes application. It is a little bit more limited than the other two. It tends to organize notes by dates that they were modified, so it's a little bit more limiting. But one way that I try to find my notes a little bit more quickly is to actually, if I'm using notes, I just keep the notes in several pages, and I always keep the table of contents at the very bottom, and I keep typing above it. Oh, are drawing above it. And sometimes what I actually will do is I will use numbers much like I did a note ability to keep those in a certain order, even though they will not order them by dates. But it's it's quicker for me to look for numbers immediately, and then I can just get to the notes as soon as I need them. So here is the file management workflow for a note ability. If I go return over here. If I go back to the table of contents, I will see that my notes air nicely organized. Like I. It depends on how I label them. I make them as clearest possible to remember which one is which, and in this case, the notes that we took today. The sample note is inside the notes. The class one take notes like you need them for this next this next round, and it will allow me to move the notes around. I can just click on edit, and if you see these three stacked lines over here, you can just click hold and you can move them around, and you can reorder them now automatically. As I said in the beginning, when you add a note whenever you add a note, able automatically go to the bottom, which makes things easier, because once you create a note, you'll find it on the bottom. It will be there waiting for you to actually move it to the section that you want to move that into. Now. There a couple of other things that we can do to also help with file management now in terms of organizing them, whether alphabetize ing using numbers sometimes, too, to sort of work around the or fight the auto alphabetize ing that a lot of these applications do for us, or maybe organized them by date, or every time you you update a document, it will move up to the top of them the pile. But you really don't want that. You can just slide this right here down and it gives you three options. You can organize them by name, which will all alphabetize them. You saw that sample note quickly moved to the bottom by modified date, which was the last one that we updated or by created date. So which is the same because once you updated, then it registers as being created. So one of the things that I do to fight that is really to number them, and I'll give you an example here for a class that I was teaching a class that I was teaching here in terms of the prep work, I actually numbered all of my sessions to fight that, um over here was by name, and I did that on purpose because every session corresponded to a different week. But each session has a different way. I had a different topic. For example, assessment only happens later on, and it would have moved to the top. And so numbering is actually a really good tip to keep these things organized in terms of page numbers I tend to. Sometimes when I'm in a for example, let me just use this note here that actually came from note ability. It's sort of like a user guide of sorts, and I will post them in the project area so you can have two to learn a little bit more about if you want to do more things with note ability than I mentioned here. But one of the things that and this is a read only file. You can see that I can add to it. But I can not delete something that the author added. This is a PdF, but it opens in the native environment, allowing me to still add to it. So let me just undo this. And so one of the things that I dio in every note that I create is I create a table of contents, and usually I use the last page down there to then use that as a table of content. I have page numbers and topics and and I organize things that way. So if I were to create a page here, I can't because it's a pdf I can alter, I can add, but I cannot add pages to it. I would do that. So, for example, if we go for over here for notes for today, this is the last page that I have there right now. And maybe I want to Maybe I want to Over here on the this page, I would like to add a table of contents. So let's imagine that I can right here, table of contents. And remember in note ability. I can convert all of this to text later, which I will happily dio. So let's imagine that I have an intro, and maybe the intro is actually on page one. So I go over here and I write page one. What I'll do instead is I'm going toe last. So this portion over here and I'm going to move down there, I'm gonna last. So it one more time, Aiken toads right at the edge and finally in mated to. But if I click on the page itself. It'll center it. It'll center it for me. And then it will allow me to laughs. So this and then bring things over here to the very top of the page and it updates the page right over here. I will last. So this page number as well, and make sure that it's aligned with the word. I'll make intro be on the same line and there were good to go. Now, if course, of course. If I want to convert this to to text, I will do that. And of course I will, because it just looks a little bit more elegant. Convert Selection. It is a text box. It looks lovely. It's in red. I can just put it up here and there you go. It will retain though the the text box background, but I can change the paper. There was originally it was playing, but I can change the paper. Go to I believe this would do a little bit. Maybe I can maybe try to match. That's it's really not that important, but I can Yeah, that would be the head of the this page and there we go and I can convert thes later and then go from there. But then it would be a very quick way to in order to manage all of my files if I had 40 50 pages in the same note that reflected notes that I took over time, it would be much easier for me to just navigate quickly to the last page. I could even bookmark it just quickly go to bookmark and then try to find the note that I'm looking for. That's a wonderful way in a quick way to actually manage the notes and note ability in terms of file management and paper. 53. There are a couple of things that we can do to keep our notes organized and very easy to retrieve later on. So one of the things that I like to do is, for example, once I identify what kind of order I want to keep for all of these different notebooks, I can actually click and hold on the notebook. And then this dialog window appears. And once I scrolled down a little bit, give me a quick summary of the last edited ones, which is great, because if I'm looking for something right here, I don't need to look down the list. In my case, I have several books. So if I know that I actually want ideas on the, uh for it to come before and you idea India, I will just click on these three stacked lines over here. Click, hold and move, and that's an easy move. I'm out and already ideas moved to be in front of a new idea. India Inside the notebooks, though, if I'm in there, I think I remember telling this this is just a quick refresher. And if I close this, I can I have two views. I have the book for you and I also have the tile view, and that allows me to move tiles around that way as well. And we order them as a note ability, as in a paper notebook, as in any anywhere that I take notes. I do like to have a table of contents as the very, very last page in my book. So right now, because they created two new books and I move them around a little bit. I will move this one more time over here, and I will move my table of contents this way. So it's the last page in the book, and I can very quickly just go there and look for the page number and the topic that I'm looking for. 11. Practicing Tips: Now let's talk a little bit about practice when I set out to learn something new or if I'm trying to do something in a different way. I always hear people telling me to do the same thing. Practice, practice, practice. But how do we do that in most instances, practicing to add or change or adapt to a change and make it my own? I usually go through some simple steps, and they have helped me migrate from the paper to the digital environment. First I choose something familiar, and I usually choose an element that is familiar to me. So in this case, it would be either a device or even a stylist that I most used to in my own personal case. It was the note strategies that actually were my most familiar piece in this process. I was quick to learn some features because I knew what I was looking for, But how can I grew my notes? So, for example, when I started experimenting with different applications, I was quick to learn some features because I knew what I was looking for. Some of the questions I had were how can I group my notes How can I draw shape? How can I organize my notes in order to find them later? In less than five minutes, how can I hand write my notes and then turn them into type written notes? So then you just start easy. Start with lists, even if all you can end up with his blocks of information. If you're tired of them, you're going to get tired of them. You will quickly move along to something more challenging. All right. The next step is to summarize I at the end of every note, I always summarize. Maybe I limited to three main ideas, and this practice really helps me develop summarizing skills, condensing, grouping, not copying and not rearranging text on the page. And by summarising, I'm also creating a story that makes sense to me, and in developing a connection with that content, I stamp it in my mind. And the more often I refer to certain portions of those notes, the more I will remember. And then finally I use color, and that only just is just to help parts of the note pop and gravitate my ice to important parts of those notes. But it is sort of like the last step when I'm feeling confident about all the other ones when I'm practicing. So to summarize, to start practicing by selecting one familiar element, start easy with lists. Add wrap ups or summaries to your notes and use color to help. 12. Flash Activity: all right, I want to invite you to join me in taking notes. While we listen to a talk, you will need your divisive choice, your stylus of choice. You check to see if you have enough battery and pause this video until you're ready. If you don't have a device handy, just grab a pan or pencil and join anyway. I will demonstrate the first minute or two of the talk, and then I will fade into the background and the talk will continue for you consecutive nonstop for the next two minutes or so. After you review it, please post your project in the project or a discussion area, and here it skill share and in any format that's comfortable for you, a pdf in image or a link to a video if you decide to record your note taking. But before you begin, I want to share some tips with you. Every time you hear speakers say things like, there are three things, or first there will be more. So remember, leave plenty of space around that you can add to later. Sometimes speakers are not as predictable as we think they are. They might say first but it might end there. You cannot go wrong. Remember, in the digital environment, you can never run out of paper. So remember to apply three new strategies As you're taking notes, you may be more comfortable about starting with lines, shapes and arrows. If this is the closest that you have to you right now or you might want to start with a visual alphabet or another strategy, maybe you want to start with color right away, and it'll be interesting to share what you have developed later on with the group. So here we go. All right, I want to see a show of hands. How many of you have unfriended someone on Facebook? Because they said something offensive about politics or religion, child care, food? And how many of you know at least one person that you avoid because you just don't want to talk to them, you know, used to be that in order to have a polite conversation, we just had to follow the advice of Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady. Stick to the weather and your health. But these days, with climate change, an anti vaccine, those subjects are not safe either, so this world that we live in this world in which every conversation has the potential to devolve into an argument where our politicians can't speak to one another, and where even the most trivial of issues have someone fighting both passionately for it and against it. It's not normal. Pew Research did a study of 10,000 American adults, and they found that at this moment we're more polarized. We're more divided than we ever have been in history, were less likely to compromise, which means we're not listening to each other. And we make decisions about where to live, who to marry and even who our friends are gonna be based on what we already believe again, that means we're not listening to each other. Ah, conversation requires a balance between talking and listening, and somewhere along the way we lost that balance. Now part of that is due to technology the smartphones that you all either have in your hands or close enough that you could grab them really quickly. According to Pew Research, about 1/3 of American teenagers send more than 100 texts a day, and many of them almost most of them are more likely to text their friends than they are to talk to them face to face. There's this great piece in the Atlantic was written by a high school teacher named Paul Barnwell, and he gave his kids a communication project. He wanted to teach him how to speak on a specific subject without using notes. And he said this. I came to realize I came to realize that conversational competence might be the single most overlooked skill we failed to teach. Kids spend hours each day engaging with ideas and each other through screens. But rarely do they have an opportunity to hone their interpersonal communication skills. It might sound like a funny question, but we have to ask ourselves, Is there any 21st century skill more important than being able, sustain, sustain, coherent, confident conversation? Now I make my living talking to people. Nobel Prize winners, truck drivers, billionaires, kindergarten teachers, heads of state plumbers. I talk to people that I like. I talked to people that I don't like. I talked to some people that I disagree with deeply on a personal level, but I still have a great conversation with them, so I'd like to spend the next 10 minutes or so, teaching you how to talk and how to listen. Many of you have already heard a lot of advice on this. Things like Look, the person in the I think of interesting thing topics to discuss in advance. Look, nod and smile the show that you're paying attention. Repeat back what you just heard or summarize it. So I want you to forget all of that. It is crap. There is no reason to learn how to show you're paying attention if you are, in fact paying attention now, I actually used the exact same skills as a professional interviewer that I do in regular life. So I'm going to teach you how to interview people, and that's actually gonna help you learn how to be better conversations. Learn to have a conversation without wasting your time without getting bored, and please God without offending anybody. We've all had really great conversations. We've had them before. We know what it's like the kind of conversation when you walk away feeling engaged and inspired, or you feel like you've made a real connection or you've been perfectly understood. There is no reason why most of your interactions can't be like that. So I have 10 basic rules. I'm gonna walk you through all of them. But honestly, if you just choose one of them and master it, your Oregon enjoy better conversations. Number one don't multi task. And I don't mean just set down your cell phone or your tablet or your car keys or whatever is in your hand. I mean, be present. Be in that moment. Don't be thinking about your argument. You have to their boss. Don't be thinking about what you're gonna have for dinner. If you want to get out of the conversation, get out of the conversation. But don't be half in it and half out of it. Number two Don't pontificate. If you wanted a state your opinion without any opportunity for response or argument or push back or growth, right, a blawg. Now there's a really good reason why I don't allow pundits on my show because they're really boring. If they're conservative, they're gonna hate Obama and food stamps and abortion. If there are liberal or they're gonna hate big banks and oil corporations and Dick Cheney totally predictable and you don't want to be like that you need to enter every conversation assuming that you have something toe learn. The famed therapist, M. Scott Peck, said that true listening requires a setting aside of oneself, and sometimes that means setting aside your personal opinion. He said that sensing this acceptance, the speaker will become less and less vulnerable and more and more likely to open up the inner recesses of his or her mind to the listener again. Assumed that you have something to learn. Bill Nye, everyone you will ever meet know something that you don't. I put it this way. Everybody is an expert in something. Number three. Use open ended questions in this case. Take a cue from journalists. Start your questions. With who? What? Where, When, Why or how? If you put in a complicated question, you're going to get a simple answer out. If I ask you, Were you terrified? You're gonna respond to the most powerful word in that sentence, which is terrified in the answer is yes, I was there. No, I wasn't. Were you angry? Yes, I was very angry. Let them describe it. They're the ones that know. Try asking them things like what was that like how did that feel? Because then they might have to stop for a moment and think about it, and you're going to get a much more interesting response. Number four go with the flow. That means thoughts will come into your mind, and you need to let them go out of your mind. We've heard interviews, often in which a guest is talking for several minutes, and then the host comes back in and asked a question, which seems like it comes out of nowhere or it's already been answered. That means the host probably stopped listening to minutes ago because he thought of this really clever question, and he was just bound and determined to say that, and we do the exact same thing. We're sitting there having a conversation with someone. And then we remember that time that we met Hugh Jackman in a coffee shop and we stopped listening. Stories and ideas are gonna come to you. You need to let them come and let them go. Number five, if you don't know, say that you don't know. Now people on the radio, especially on NPR, are much more aware that they're going on the record and so they're more careful about what they claim to be an expert in and what they claim to know for sure. Do that air on the side of caution Talk should not be cheap. Number six. Don't equate your experience with theirs. If they're talking about having lost a family member, don't start talking about the time that you lost a family member. If you're talking about the trouble that they're having at work, don't tell them about how much you hate your job. It's not the same. It is never the same. All experiences their individual. And more importantly, it is not about you. You don't need to take that moment to prove how amazing you are or how much you've suffered . Somebody ask Stephen Hawking wants What is Ike was, and he says, I have no idea. People who brag about their IQ's are losers. Conversations are not a promotional opportunity. Number seven. Try not to repeat yourself. It's condescending, and it's really boring, and we tend to do it a lot, especially in work conversations or in conversations with our kids. We have a point to make, so we just keep rephrasing it over and over don't do that. Number eight, Stay out of the weeds. Frankly, people don't care about the years, the names, the dates, all those details that you're struggling to come up with in your mind. They don't care. What they care about is you. They care about what you're like, what you have in common. So forget the details. Leave him out. Number nine. This is not the last one, but it is the most important one. Listen, I cannot tell you how many really important people have said that listening is perhaps the most the number one most important skill that you could develop, Buddhist said. And I'm paraphrasing. If your mouth is open, you're not learning. And Calvin Coolidge said no man ever listened his way out of a job. Why do we not listen to each other? Number one? We'd rather talk. What? I'm talking. I'm in control. I don't have to hear anything. I'm not interested in on the center of attention. I can bolster my own identity, but there's another reason we get distracted. The average person talks at about 225 words per minute, but we can listen at up to 500 words per minute. So our minds are filling in those other 275 words. And look, I know it takes effort and energy to actually pay attention to someone, but if you can't do that, you're not in a conversation. Your just two people shouting out barely related sentences in the same place you have to, you have to listen to one another. Steven Covey said it very beautifully. He said. Most of us don't listen with the intent to understand. We listen with the intent to reply one more rule and Norton, and it's this one. Be brief. All of this boils out to the same basic concept, and it is this one. Be interested in other people. You know, I grew up with a very famous grandfather, and there was kind of a ritual in my home. People would come over to talk to my grandparent's, and after they would leave, my mother would come over your house and she'd say, Do you know who that waas? She was the runner up to Miss America. He was the mayor of Sacramento. She wanted Pulitzer Prize. He's a Russian ballet dancer and I started. I kind of grew up, assuming everyone has some hidden amazing thing about them. And I honestly, I think it's what makes me a better host. I keep my mouth shut as often as I possibly can. I keep my mind open and I'm always prepared to be amazed. And I'm never disappointed. You do the same thing. Go out, talk to people, listen to people and, most importantly, be prepared to be amazed. Thanks. 13. Thank You!: thank you for spending time here. I hope this glass was a useful one for you. So at the beginning of this journey, I said that by the end of this glass you would be able to accomplish at least three goals. The 1st 1 was to summarise ideas to learn some tips here and there on how to condense and how to group your ideas. The 2nd 1 was to select an ideal digital platform that you could use for your own digital. Uh, no taking that met your needs. And the 3rd 1 was to apply or start using at least three new strategies. Note taking strategies in your note taking process. So during the collaborative portion of the flash activity, we used lines, shapes and arrows, and we used space placeholders, and we also use some color. So for your final project, I want to ask you post whatever you developed doing that, your portion of the flash activity and I also want to ask if you decided to digit If you decide to digitize a note after this glass, so you have the before and after post that as well. That would be very, very cool. to see. So the next class in this series is creating infographics from your notes. Thank you, and I'll see you soon.