Using AI to Enhance Focused Note-Taking, Step 1: Taking Notes

In today’s episode, we'll explore ways that AI can be integrated effectively into step one of AVID's Focused Note-Taking Process. Visit AVID Open Access to learn more.

Transcript

Paul Beckermann 0:00 Welcome to Tech Talk for Teachers. I'm your host, Paul Beckermann.

Transition Music with Rena's Children 0:05 Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. What's in the toolkit? Check it out.

Paul Beckermann 0:16 The topic of today's episode is using AI to enhance focused note-taking. Step one: taking notes. Focused note-taking helps students in many ways. It helps them focus their learning, organize their thoughts, ask important questions, think critically, and increase retention.

Over the years, the objectives and benefits of this process have remained consistent, but the technology has changed. With the proliferation of technology in our classrooms, students have moved from paper and pencil notes to a process that is augmented with digital devices like Chromebooks and iPads. Now AI has entered the mix.

While note-taking can still happen in pencil and paper format, it's worth considering how technology, and specifically AI, might be integrated effectively to enhance the process. Whenever you're integrating technology into a lesson, however, and especially when considering the use of AI tools, it's important that your students are not offloading their critical thought processes to the technology.

As we explore AI's role in the note-taking process, it's critical that the learner remains engaged cognitively at a high level. The process should be student-driven, and it should serve as a catalyst for student critical thinking and analysis. Rather than taking notes for students, AI should be used to help students prepare to take notes and to process and think about the notes they are taking.

For instance, AI can explain background concepts, offer formatting and organizational options, and notice patterns in notes a student has taken. In the end, however, the student needs to do the heavy lifting. They must engage with the AI feedback, determine the meaning of any AI-generated information, and determine why—or if—that information matters.

They must ask AI to notice or suggest, not explain or choose. They might say, "This is what AI noticed. Why does that matter?" Or they might say, "These are some options posed by AI. Do any of these make sense for me? And if so, which ones?" At all times, students must remain in control of the note-taking thought process.

Over the course of the next five episodes of Tech Talk for Teachers, I'm going to break down each of the five steps of the focused note-taking process. Each week, I'll explore how AI might be woven into the step featured that week. Today, I'll begin with step one: taking notes.

Let's review what step one entails. In this step, students create their notes. This involves selecting a note-taking format. It could be Cornell notes, a Venn diagram, a multi-column organizer, a concept map, or something else that aligns with their need and the way the content is presented. Based on that decision, students should set up their note-taking page, either on paper or digitally.

On that page, they should record the essential question for the lesson, and then they begin taking notes based on an information source. This source content might include a lecture, a reading, an online resource, or a video. As they review the source material, students select what's important, they paraphrase ideas, and they arrange that information in a meaningful way on their note-taking page. Everything should connect back to that essential question.

So, those are the tasks to be completed. How can AI be brought into this process without doing the critical thinking for the student? In general, students might use AI to prepare their thinking, help them notice important concepts, identify key vocabulary, and help them focus on big ideas. Essentially, AI can be a guide and a coach, but it should not be the note-taker. With that context in mind, here are seven ways to integrate AI into step one of the focused note-taking process.

Transition Music with Rena's Children 4:23 Here are your seven tips.

Paul Beckermann 4:29 Number one: preview. AI can be used to generate a preview. Students can use a prompt like this: "Convert the attached resource into a short preview summary to help me better understand what I will be reading." Another option could be: "Give me a checklist of things I should watch for while taking notes on [insert topic here], but ask me to fill in the details myself."

To do this, students could use a tool like NotebookLM, which allows them to upload documents, web links, and multimedia into a notebook, and then they can ask questions about that content. In a regular chatbot, they would need to upload or attach the source content to ask questions about it. If students leave a chat string in a normal chatbot, they will lose the context of the material they've uploaded. In NotebookLM, that content remains in the notebook until it's deleted.

Number two: reading, listening, and viewing guides. To help focus a student's attention on what matters most in relationship to the lesson's goals, they can use this prompt: "The essential question is [insert question]. What key ideas should I focus on when learning about this topic?" If you think this is giving away too much of the thinking to AI, you could instead have students ask something like: "Ask me questions that will help me identify the most important ideas in a lesson about [blank]. Don't give me the answers."

Number three: vocabulary. AI can be used to identify and define key terms. Students could give this command to a chatbot: "Identify five terms or concepts that appear central to understanding the topic. Use simple language to explain those in a way that helps me understand this resource."

Similarly, the student could skim the content and identify unfamiliar words themselves. They could then provide those terms to the chatbot and request simple definitions in the context of the essential question. If you don't want the chatbot to provide the actual definition, you could rephrase the prompt to something like: "Here are three vocabulary words from the lesson: [insert words]. Ask me questions that help me predict what they might mean." Students could also ask: "How do these terms relate to the essential question?"

Number four: background information. AI can provide background information that gives the student necessary context for understanding the content. For this, students can enter: "Provide relevant background knowledge that will help me to better comprehend this resource."

Number five: structure. AI can help to brainstorm note-taking structures. Students could ask: "What are some note-taking structures I could use that would align well with this essential question: [insert question]?" Another option that is a little more directed could be: "I'm about to learn about [blank]. Ask me questions that will help me prepare my notes before the lesson." A more open-ended option could be: "I'm about to learn about [blank]. Ask me questions that will help me prepare my notes."

Number six: completeness. After students finish capturing their notes, they can use this prompt: "Review my notes and compare them to the source document. Identify inaccuracies and gaps." Based on this feedback, students can strengthen their original draft of notes.

Number seven: comprehensive preview and review. You could have students use NotebookLM to bookend the lesson. To do this, students would upload the source content into a new notebook and then use the tools to generate a briefing document. These briefing documents will often highlight major themes, key terminology, and important relationships between ideas in the source content.

This can help set students up for success before taking their notes. It's sort of like combining options one through four from the previous list into one step. When the students finish taking their own notes, they can review the briefing document again and ask themselves several higher-order analysis questions: "What ideas appear in the briefing that I missed? What ideas did I include that seem less important? What important ideas did I include that the AI missed?"

This process can help students evaluate if they have taken targeted and comprehensive notes on their own. It's also a way for them to evaluate the effectiveness of the AI and realize that AI can hallucinate and make mistakes. Once they have finished this evaluation, students can revise their notes.

At the end of step one of the focused note-taking process, it's helpful to have students debrief. This can help them evaluate not only the learning they experienced but also the effectiveness of their note-taking and the role AI played in that process. They could ask questions like the following:

For learning: What did you learn? What questions do you still have? About note-taking: How did the process go? What worked well? What shortcomings did you notice? In regards to AI: How did AI help you in this process? Were there any parts of the process where you allowed AI to do some of the important thinking for you?

The answers to these questions can be the foundation of great classroom discussion, and they also help students set goals for improving the process the next time.

Paul Beckermann 10:05 All right, so that's step one. In our next episode, we'll move on to step two and explore how AI can be used to help students process their notes. To learn more about today's topic and explore other free resources, visit avidopenaccess.org.

Specifically, I encourage you to check out the article collection, "AI in the K-12 Classroom," and, of course, be sure to join Rena Winston and me next week for our full-length podcast, Unpacking Education, where we're joined by exceptional guests and explore education topics that are important to you. Thanks for listening. Take care, and thanks for all you do. You make a difference.