pre-college notetaking class

[Anonymous]

They all record lectures and use AI software to transcribe the lectures. Mine then takes their time listening to the lectures again and reading those transcriptions to make their own notes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They all record lectures and use AI software to transcribe the lectures. Mine then takes their time listening to the lectures again and reading those transcriptions to make their own notes.

Agree. My kid at Ivy does this....spends hours on lecture notes AFTERWARDS.....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:High school

Or middle school

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Record lectures and have AI create notes from the recordings.

Do not do this without your professors permission. Without prior permission this is a violation of the honor code and certain laws. Generally only students with disability accommodations are permitted this option and they must still discuss it with each of their instructors in advance.

You live in lala land…. DS is at any Ivy. He is a Senior and like the PP mentioned, he told me that basically 70% of his classmates are doing exactly what was described earlier. Record/Transcribe and use an AI tool like Claude/Gemini/NotebookLM or Open AI to create a nice report for each lecture along with a summary of main concepts, quizzes etc. Nobody is asking professors for permissions. They use their cell phones and IPads. It is what it is.

No, it's not lala land - it's real university policy for a lot of reasons that go way beyond the preferences of students. Students (and parents, apparently) don't have to like it, but they do deserve to know that unauthorized recording is a violation.

It is a standard accommodation for people with disabilities.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Note-taking is productivity porn from a bygone error before mechanical and computer text reproduction.

The notes are not the end goal. The material embedded in your brain is the goal. Taking notes by hand if you’re able to is an effective way to do that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just had a flashback to the notes class our HS had us take before 9th grade. We learned Cornell notetaking.

They teach Cornell notetaking at NCS.

At Deal too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Note-taking is productivity porn from a bygone error before mechanical and computer text reproduction.

The notes are not the end goal. The material embedded in your brain is the goal. Taking notes by hand if you’re able to is an effective way to do that.

Then notes should be optional if they’re not the end goal. I rarely looked over the notes I took, for review the textbook is better and some books even have a summary at the end of each chapter.

I prefer to think deeply about the topic being taught, instead of coloring and underlining which feel like childish busy work. I never understand utility of poorly redrawing a diagram that’s already well done, clearly labeled etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Record lectures and have AI create notes from the recordings.

Do not do this without your professors permission. Without prior permission this is a violation of the honor code and certain laws. Generally only students with disability accommodations are permitted this option and they must still discuss it with each of their instructors in advance.

Don't be such a rule-following Karen. No one has any way of knowing that a student is running a voice-recording app on their phone, as long as the kid isn't totally stupid about it and doesn't broadcast it.

I had always understood “Karen” as a term used to criticize people who believed that the they are too special to follow the rules that are put in place to protect everyone. It feels rather ironic that you use that term for my point of view in this situation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:These idiots that think AI will do the same thing as note writing need to take a neurology class.

Or just read a study, any study, on the value of handwritten notes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Record lectures and have AI create notes from the recordings.

Do not do this without your professors permission. Without prior permission this is a violation of the honor code and certain laws. Generally only students with disability accommodations are permitted this option and they must still discuss it with each of their instructors in advance.

You live in lala land…. DS is at any Ivy. He is a Senior and like the PP mentioned, he told me that basically 70% of his classmates are doing exactly what was described earlier. Record/Transcribe and use an AI tool like Claude/Gemini/NotebookLM or Open AI to create a nice report for each lecture along with a summary of main concepts, quizzes etc. Nobody is asking professors for permissions. They use their cell phones and IPads. It is what it is.

It is disheartening to know that 70% of Ivy students are willfully violating the academic honor code because everyone else is doing it. And that you think I’m the one who is crazy for saying students should comply with an academic integrity document they willingly signed.

The better schools dont care. Harvard and MIT basically post all of their lectures online.


What part of the honor code applies? Honest question. Creating AI notes is not the same as turning in an aI paper.

In some states it is against the law to record classroom lectures without prior permission (eg Pennsylvania). Under any circumstances there can be privacy concerns and potential copyright violations which is why recording of lectures without prior permission is generally prohibited across all universities.

I cannot speak to each section of each schools honor code. The issue isn’t using AI to summarize notes, the issue is recording lectures without permission.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So what does this mean for kids with accommodations? Are they doomed to never really learn? I am not being snarky. Genuine concern.

My daughter has dyslexia and dysgraphia and has note taking accommodations. With copies of the notes in advance she can prereqd the materials and the notes and be prepared to ask questions to clarify anything she doesn’t understand from the lectures. Reading is slower for her, so she has to work ahead. After class she will make her own summary, often using pictures, mind maps etc to solicit the content in her memory. She finds it most efficient to study from her own notes.

She does use AI to prepare quizzes from material too. It is an amazing tool, but it doesn’t learn for you, it helps put the material into a more individually tailored learnable format.

And she is working on her PhD in OT, so the notes accommodation she had in high school didn’t prevent her from learning in any way.

It will affect her when she goes to get a job and they provide accommodations.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These idiots that think AI will do the same thing as note writing need to take a neurology class.

Or just read a study, any study, on the value of handwritten notes.

Right. But there hasn’t been ANY study done comparing the value of handwritten notes, vs the protocol proposed here (including ai transcribed notes, then summaries of concepts, then spending 1 hour post class doing through the material in detail again utilizing the quiz format) while you simple pay attention in class and Interact with the professor with questions. I’m 100% certain that the 2nd option proposed will beat the handwritten notes neurology studies 10 out of 10 times.

My own anecdotal evidence supports this. My first 2 years at this not to be named IVY, I lived by Cornell notes. Taking amazing notes each class. Yes I did well. off course it works. It has worked for 100 years. But the time it took me to review my notes and te-study the material was much much longer than what I have been doing in my junior year with the previous mentioned protocol. I can now digest the exact same information (and more advanced since I’m taking Sr classes and some grad classes) in a much quicker and efficient way than simple taking hand notes. My grades prove it and I feel MUCH MUCH more knowledgeable about the subjects I’m studying.

Please note I’m not proposing using these tools to Cheat. That is ludicrous. What I’m saying is that if used properly, these tools are amazing learning tools that are much better than simply note taking.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These idiots that think AI will do the same thing as note writing need to take a neurology class.

Or just read a study, any study, on the value of handwritten notes.

Right. But there hasn’t been ANY study done comparing the value of handwritten notes, vs the protocol proposed here (including ai transcribed notes, then summaries of concepts, then spending 1 hour post class doing through the material in detail again utilizing the quiz format) while you simple pay attention in class and Interact with the professor with questions. I’m 100% certain that the 2nd option proposed will beat the handwritten notes neurology studies 10 out of 10 times.

My own anecdotal evidence supports this. My first 2 years at this not to be named IVY, I lived by Cornell notes. Taking amazing notes each class. Yes I did well. off course it works. It has worked for 100 years. But the time it took me to review my notes and te-study the material was much much longer than what I have been doing in my junior year with the previous mentioned protocol. I can now digest the exact same information (and more advanced since I’m taking Sr classes and some grad classes) in a much quicker and efficient way than simple taking hand notes. My grades prove it and I feel MUCH MUCH more knowledgeable about the subjects I’m studying.

Please note I’m not proposing using these tools to Cheat. That is ludicrous. What I’m saying is that if used properly, these tools are amazing learning tools that are much better than simply note taking.

What tools are you using? I want my incoming freshman to get a jump start this summer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Record lectures and have AI create notes from the recordings.

Do not do this without your professors permission. Without prior permission this is a violation of the honor code and certain laws. Generally only students with disability accommodations are permitted this option and they must still discuss it with each of their instructors in advance.

You live in lala land…. DS is at any Ivy. He is a Senior and like the PP mentioned, he told me that basically 70% of his classmates are doing exactly what was described earlier. Record/Transcribe and use an AI tool like Claude/Gemini/NotebookLM or Open AI to create a nice report for each lecture along with a summary of main concepts, quizzes etc. Nobody is asking professors for permissions. They use their cell phones and IPads. It is what it is.

It is disheartening to know that 70% of Ivy students are willfully violating the academic honor code because everyone else is doing it. And that you think I’m the one who is crazy for saying students should comply with an academic integrity document they willingly signed.

Show me any Ivy that claims we are violating academic honor code to take AI notes in classroom? Besides my Ivy posts the lecture recording online. Easy way around this is to take the online lecture and transcribe it. There you go. no more problems.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These idiots that think AI will do the same thing as note writing need to take a neurology class.

Or just read a study, any study, on the value of handwritten notes.

Right. But there hasn’t been ANY study done comparing the value of handwritten notes, vs the protocol proposed here (including ai transcribed notes, then summaries of concepts, then spending 1 hour post class doing through the material in detail again utilizing the quiz format) while you simple pay attention in class and Interact with the professor with questions. I’m 100% certain that the 2nd option proposed will beat the handwritten notes neurology studies 10 out of 10 times.

My own anecdotal evidence supports this. My first 2 years at this not to be named IVY, I lived by Cornell notes. Taking amazing notes each class. Yes I did well. off course it works. It has worked for 100 years. But the time it took me to review my notes and te-study the material was much much longer than what I have been doing in my junior year with the previous mentioned protocol. I can now digest the exact same information (and more advanced since I’m taking Sr classes and some grad classes) in a much quicker and efficient way than simple taking hand notes. My grades prove it and I feel MUCH MUCH more knowledgeable about the subjects I’m studying.

Please note I’m not proposing using these tools to Cheat. That is ludicrous. What I’m saying is that if used properly, these tools are amazing learning tools that are much better than simply note taking.

What tools are you using? I want my incoming freshman to get a jump start this summer.

Otter.ai and any LLM like Claude, Gemini, ChatGpt or NotebookLM. You need to pay the subscription for Otter.AI to get the most minutes out of it. Alternatively you can just use a digital recorder, but it becomes more cumbersome to move that to your computer to upload to a LLM (Large Language Model). My favorite workflow which I have automated (you dont have to, I’m just a nerd) is record with otter.ai in your cell or iPad. Once it transcribes it, export the txt file to the notebookLM for each lecture. Than you can interact with the material on NotebookLM, ask questions, create quizzes, summaries, etc. My favorite is creating Audio Files that are like podcasts that focus on the specific portions of the lecture you didnt quite understand. The amazing feature is that you can stop the “podcast”and ask a question with your own voice and it will respond based on the lecture materials. I do that after every lecture and review the material in 30 minutes at night.

I like notebookLM since the source is constrained to what you upload (lecture materials). So it doesnt hallucinate searching for info outside the wall and giving you fake data or information. I do that weekly. One notebookLM folder per week. That way I can review my weekly lectures Sunday night before I start the week again 100% prepared for what is next. This has transformed my learning.