Paul Beckermann 0:00 Welcome to Tech Talk for Teachers. I'm your host, Paul Beckermann.
Transition Music with Rena's Children 0:06 Check it out. Check it out. What's in the toolkit? Check it out.
Paul Beckermann 0:15 The topic of today's episode is using AI to enhance focused note-taking, Step Two: Processing Notes. Last week, we explored how AI can be integrated into Step One of the focused note-taking process: taking notes. Today, we'll explore Step Two: Processing Notes.
Paul Beckermann 0:36 To begin with, let's review what happens during this step. In the processing notes stage, what students are really doing is thinking about their notes. They're reviewing them and evaluating the relative importance of the information and ideas that they've captured in those notes. To do this, they engage with the notes by underlining, highlighting, circling, chunking, questioning, adding, and deleting information in order to identify, select, sort, organize, and classify the main ideas and details. This step is critical in forming meaning from the notes and in organizing it, both mentally and on paper.
Paul Beckermann 1:12 As students complete the step, it's critical that they are the ones doing the hard thinking. That's where the learning happens. In that light, we want to structure the use of AI in a way that enhances, not replaces, student critical thinking. It should be used as a thinking partner, or to take it one step further, a thinking prompter. Students should do the initial hard work, and then AI can be leaned upon to help them refine, question, and extend that initial thinking.
In order to make sure that guardrails are in place to protect that student thinking, consider these three as non-negotiables. Number one: AI should be used after thinking, not before. Number two: students must annotate and process notes first before using AI. And number three: every AI interaction requires a student follow-up—some sort of response or decision by the student. You could sum this up in a simple three-step process:
- Student thinks.
- Student prompts the AI.
- Student makes a decision about the AI output.
Paul Beckermann 2:23 With this context in mind, let's look at eight AI-infused strategies that you can have students use during focused note-taking, Step Two, or the processing of their notes.
Transition Music with Rena's Children 2:23 Here is your list of tips.
Paul Beckermann 2:23 Number one: use the "Show AI Your Thinking First" protocol. For this step, students must annotate their notes manually first. This includes classic note-taking strategies such as highlighting key ideas and vocabulary, chunking related materials together, and writing notes and questions in the margin. To make AI processing of these interactions most effective, this process should be completed digitally. However, if students prefer taking notes on paper, they can take a picture of those notes and then upload them into a chatbot that can read and interpret text from images. Options that generally work include ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot.
However, it's important to note that the use of any image can break down at times. For instance, if the handwriting is messy, the AI might interpret it incorrectly. Similarly, visual clues like circles, arrows, and color coding can be misinterpreted or even ignored by the AI. Still, it's an option. With digital notes, the original digital file can be uploaded into the prompting process for AI analysis.
Once the student-generated annotations are finished, students can then prompt the AI with something like this: "Here are my annotated notes. What patterns or connections might I be missing?" This process requires students to do the cognitive heavy lifting before getting feedback on their notes. With the AI feedback in front of them, they should then review those insights and decide if they agree or disagree with them. They can then use that process to revise their notes as needed.
Number two: use AI as a question generator, not an answer source. For this step, students again paste in their annotated notes. This time they would enter a prompt, something like this: "Generate five higher-level questions I should be asking about these notes." Students then answer the questions themselves. With this approach, the AI is helping to generate curiosity while prompting students to do the reasoning.
Number three: "Agree, Disagree, Revise" routine. This strategy can be integrated as part of nearly all AI strategies. In this approach, students ask the AI to identify main ideas from their notes using a prompt like, "What are the three to five main ideas of these notes?" In response, students must agree or disagree and then revise or replace if they see fit. To deepen student thinking a step further, it's helpful to require them to justify each decision that they make.
Number four: conduct a chunking check with accountability. Once again, students do the hard work first by chunking their notes independently. They would then ask the AI, "How would you chunk these notes?" Students then compare the results and explain the differences. This can help them think deeply about organization and classification of information. They might like their approach better, or they might learn new approaches from the suggestions offered by the AI.
Number five: priority ranking with justification. For this strategy, the students would suggest their priority ranking for a concept related to the notes. It might be to rank the most important concepts from the note-taking session. They would provide this ranking to the AI and then ask the AI to complete a similar action. This prompt might be something like: "Here are my top five concepts from this lesson, ranked in order from most important to least important. Rank these ideas as you see them from most to least important."
In response, the students must consider the AI suggestion and decide if they want to change their ranking. To make sure they are critically thinking about any changes, they can be asked to provide their reasoning. They could pair up with a classmate to share their process and results as well. This would add additional verbal processing and collaboration components.
Number six: use AI as a confusion detector. For this option, students would upload their notes and then prompt, "Based on these notes, what might be confusing or unclear?" Students would then review the AI's feedback and decide if they agree or not. Using this feedback, they can clarify gaps that they identify by using the process. This process is a bit like getting feedback from their teacher or a peer about the quality and accuracy of their notes.
Number seven: use the "Add, Delete Challenge." Students upload their notes and ask, "What information here seems unnecessary or missing?" Students must review the feedback and then decide what to delete or add based on the feedback. In this step, AI is again suggesting, but students must be the ones to make the final decision.
Number eight: use AI as a second draft partner. With this approach, students both annotate and revise their notes first. This ensures that they are thinking about them deeply enough to rearrange ideas into more meaningful chunks. Once they have completed this revision, they can upload it and ask AI, "How could I improve the clarity and organization of these notes?" In this process, the AI is never seeing the raw, unprocessed notes, just the already revised version.
In response, students must review the suggestions and once again make final decisions about any revisions that they agree with. Not only can this help them improve their organizational skills, but it also requires them to think critically about their notes another time. For all these strategies, AI should be used as a thought partner. It should help identify thinking opportunities for students, not replace that critical thinking, as mentioned at the top of the episode.
This can be summed up as a simple three-step process:
- Students think—no AI involved.
- Students prompt the AI for feedback and insights.
- Students decide about that AI input and act as they see fit. In some ways, it's kind of like an AI sandwich, with students thinking both first and last, and AI providing some feedback in the middle: Student, AI, then student again.
Paul Beckermann 8:50 In the next episode, we'll move on to Step Three of the focused note-taking process and explore how AI can be used to help students think beyond their notes.
Paul Beckermann 8:58 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 titled "AI in the K-12 Classroom." And, of course, be sure to join us next Wednesday 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.
