How many different tasks are you attempting on your screen right now?

This is the question posed in a recent article in The Conversation exploring the best way to take notes on an electronic device. As research indicates only 5% of people multi-task efficiently, beyond banning technology in the classroom, what solutions can we find to help our students and ourselves note more effectively on an electronic device?

Well, here are some tips to get you started:

Tip 1: Working memory is important – chunking ‘like’ information together, using your own words, summarising and reflecting all help as long as notes are reprocessed later on.

Tip 2: Structured learning tasks help – build the technology actively into the lesson. This results in less time multi-tasking and more time-on-task for learning.

Tip 3: Share responsibility – working with students to decide how technology can be used is important. Try making contracts on use that can be revisited later in the semester.

Tip 4: Encourage easy tools – word-processed notes can be distributed to the class allowing students to annotate them and can be shared, encouraging the process of note-taking note-making, note-interacting and note-reflecting.

For more tips and information, see the full article here.