# Tag Info

13

As you have noticed, mathematical text is often quite concise and it can be difficult to squeeze it into tighter space or write in your own words in a nontrivial way. Therefore it is easy to end up copying things verbatim if you want to take notes. Taking useful notes in mathematics is quite different from many other subjects, and you are not alone with your ...

10

You said that most of your students are first year college students. Such students often lack basic academic skills. Perhaps they were smart enough in high school to get away with not taking notes or studying, perhaps they had teachers that provided too much scaffolding (and never took it away), or perhaps the standards were just lower. There are a lot of ...

9

Over the years I have tried multiple tools including commercial and free, gui-based, script-based and LaTeX-based, vector, raster and 3D renderers. For the last three years I've mostly used Inkscape (official website, Wikipedia entry), which I strongly recommend. Advantages: easy to use, enough effects, free, versatile. Disadvantages: not as streamlined as ...

6

I'm fond of asymptote, but it is not geared towards geometric diagrams. For me it is important that it integrates well with LaTeX (uses the same fonts, even complete math formulas). I use it more for general drawing. Take a look at the gallery, there are several geometric diagrams.

5

Personal experience. In an intro to probability course I had the chance to have a good friend (who used to be a lab partner in another course) and we decided to use ShareLatex to build our own course notes (a "digested" version of what was shown in class). (It is better than Google Docs for the typesetting of formulas, but it is only free for up to two ...

5

I have no study to cite at this stage, but I can offer some of my experience of working with thousands of students in my Maths Learning Centre. Organisation In my experience, students dislike things that are difficult to follow and difficult to find information in by themselves. They like things with clear layout and organisation, with important ...

5

I use Adobe Illustrator, but my school has a license so I don't have to purchase it myself. It is extremely versatile, but there is a learning curve. One can paste drawings and images created by other software into Illustrator, and then control many aspects in Illustrator before exporting into PDF or JPEG or whatever format is best for you. Here is one ...

5

Regarding this part of the question: Perhaps someone who uses GeoGebra can provide insight into how to best format GeoGebra so that the drawings fit well into Word documents. There are two distinct issues you might be having, and I am not sure which one is your main problem. When you export the Geogebra diagram to a picture (either via the clipboard or ...

4

I can only offer my personal opinion on the matter, having witnessed both formats as a student. I think that the material you use should be designed for the specific use you want them for. Slides are great for talks, presentations and to supplement lectures. They are usually designed in a way that you can see all the important things at a glance. Unwieldy ...

4

I personally use IPE to draw diagrams for insertion into TeX documents. Some benefits about it that I like: It is free. It generates .pdf outputs, easily inserted into TeX files or usable/viewable on their own. It renders LaTeX text so you can label parts of diagrams easily. The "grid snap" feature is great; quoting from the site linked above: "It is easy ...

4

Print the slides on ordinary paper in portrait orientation with two slides per page. Print only on one side of the paper. Use a three hole-punch to punch the paper on the opposite side you normally would, so that the slides are on the "back" of each sheet. Bind the printed slides in three-ring binder, and include additional paper. After turning the first ...

4

I’ve been using GoodNotes 4 for six years now, and I’m pretty happy with it. Others I’ve heard about but do not have extensive experience with are Notability and Nebo. Notability has a audio recording feature which upon playback can sync the audio to your writing (but again, I have not used this feature). Good Notes 4 does have the zoom in feature you are ...

4

While my data organizing problems are usually more related to research, they still often involve notes, papers, and sheets of data collection interview items that are much like handouts. One solution that I have used (although I am still perfecting it) is to scan everything and get rid of the paper copies. Once I have electronic copies of things, a number ...

3

I like the various lecture notes by William Chen a lot. Clear and reasonably complete, if introductory.

3

Possibly not helpful to you since to my knowledge it is only available in French, but I have a marvelous recollection of the "Petit guide calcul différentiel à l'usage de la licence et de l'agrégation" by François Rouvière.

3

Google Docs has a very convenient "Create drawing" option that has mist of the core functionality of Illustrator or Inkscape and requires no software download. I've used it for several papers and Wikipedia articles. As a total amateur, I find it easy to make lame drawings like this in 10 minutes: Or this in 20 minutes:

3

Well, what I've got during my classes, like GeraldEdgar already said, is that you don't have one solution to solve it all. What you could do is posting your notes the night (or maybe two nights) before the lecture. That way the students who want to use your notes, can print it and take it with them. They're will always be some other students who wish to make ...

3

I'll stick my neck out: There is no obvious advantage of handwritten lecture notes (written by the lecturer) over typed ones (typed by the lecturer), given infinite time, ability and willingness to create the notes. Note: this is not intended to be a research-based answer, and I'm not even certain I'd agree with it if I spent a long time thinking. It is ...

3

For many courses, note taking is concerned with the organization of data for the purposes of recall. Let's call such organized data "information". In mathematics, the purpose of writing is more, borrowing the language of John Dewey, to marshal resources toward a purpose more specific than recall. Let's call information aimed at a specific purpose "knowledge"....

3

What works for me may not work for you. But here goes with what worked well for me: I used the textbook as my notes. It had an index and was better written (and prettier!) than my handwriting. Where the textbook was too dense or omitted steps in proofs that I needed to make explicit, I added notes in the margins. This sounds like your option #1. What's ...

2

First: I'm not aware of any research on this sort of thing. Neither is specifically designed to create opportunities for students to think mathematically, so I doubt there is a significant math ed basis (or interest) for looking into this. My guess is that a lot of the use of one or the other technology will come down to preference and convenience. As far ...

2

With your assumption of "infinite effort available" the "easier to edit" is of no consecuence... In my opinion, slides should just point out the important aspects, "making them into lecture notes" isn't the right use of the medium. They should supplement the detailed notes. If you distribute your lecture notes as e.g. PDF (not printed on paper), you can ...

2

I think what works depends on the local culture to a fair extent, ie what the expectations of the students are. As a student myself, I almost always had to copy down everything in lectures, and no-one seemed to have a problem with that. One lecturer gave us gappy notes, which we hated, because it made the easy bits (which were printed) way too slow, and ...

2

I trudged through Pearson's site and found that Lay's Analysis with an Intro. to Proof has PowerPoint slides on their resources page. You'll have to get an account with them to download the files, but I think that the process is straightforward for anyone who is verifiably a faculty member. See https://www.pearson.com/us/higher-education/program/Lay-...

1

There have been many positive reports on the use of collaborative note taking in the STEM disciplines, in part because they help students learn not only the content of a lecture, but they also help students to model and replicate independently how to take good notes. This is consistent with research which demonstrates that the best mode of instruction ...

1

My answer In my experience, I have used guided notes with success, as long as students straddled the "sweet spot" of giving them ample opportunities to interact with the topic and avoiding the creation of mindless, note-taking robots. With guided notes, my guess is that your goal is to accelerate students by saving them time from writing. I think that this ...

1

When in lectures, as mentioned above, if you have access to the slides or whatever, that is great! I'd suggest bringing a tape recorder with you, and then when you take notes, either take them on the slides itself, or in your notes write Slide 1: lsdkfjslkfjslkfjsldkfjsljfsdlkfs Slide 2: sdlkfjsldfkjslfkj and only take what you feel at the time is ...

1

I try to keep my work reusable, and from all things (which work or not, YMMV) I would stress one: $${\Huge\text{context}}$$ There are many issues with searchability, readability, complexity, etc., but whatever you do, it is much easier to reuse your work when you know the context in which it had been done or used. (All the arguments I would add were ...

1

I find that the most efficient way to store things is to scan them in. You will hopefully find that the photocopier at your school can batch-scan and email the copies to you, or put them on a USB. After that I give them very descriptive names according to a naming scheme, so that they easy to search for. By storing them in my dropbox or google-drive folders,...

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