If I were a journalist, a student, or really anyone whose job required taking notes on what people say, I would be all over this. As it is I’m kind of wishing my job actually did require it, just so I could play with it.
Livescribe :: Smartpen
The Livescribe smartpen revolutionizes the act of writing by recording and linking audio to what you put on paper. Tap on words or drawings in your notes, and the smartpen replays recorded audio from the time you were writing. Transfer notes to your PC to backup, replay, and share them online.
The pen contains a computer and recorder that can record up to a hundred hours of audio at a time, and a little optical sensor that tracks the position of the pen against the tiny dots printed on special paper that you take notes on (according to at least one account I’ve read you can print your own paper with a laser printer, as well as buying it fairly cheap from the manufacturer). It uses those dots to synch the audio recording against what you were writing at the time, so that clicking on the notes lets it replay the audio from around that time. It’s no help if your note-taking (like mine in many of my college classes) consisted of just staring off into space or drawing random doodles, though I guess you’d at least still be able to listen to the lecture again, but if you’re at least semi-diligent about putting something as a mnemonic trigger on the page, this is so brilliant I can’t stand it.
By the way, the book that finally taught me how to take useful class notes was The Study Game: How To Play and Win with Statement-PIE. Long out of print, it’s still remembered fondly (at least by me and five reviewers on Amazons) for its simple, concise, and practical approach to learning how to listen actively in order to organize your notes into paragraphs consisting of Statement, Proof, Information, Examples. Most of the time, what a student needs is not a complete transcription of what the teacher said (the production of which generally takes up so much attention that there’s little left over to actually process what’s being said), but a summary of the key information. Unfortunately, at least some of that time you really do need an accurate transcription, particularly of complex ideas that are new to you and so are hard to summarize. That’s where being able to replay just that portion of the lecture with LiveScribe would be incredibly useful. Yes, good teachers will do more than just rattle it off, and can provide a number of ways to convey and reinforce the crucial points, including including it in class handouts, writing it on the board…but honestly, even at (or is it especially at) the college level, good teachers are few and far between, and even they are not generally bringing their A game to teaching Intro Calc at eight in the morning.