Livenotes

Overview

Livenotes is a tool and practice that aims to facilitate small-group learning through collaborative note-taking in conventional lectures.  Using Livenotes, small groups of students exchange and annotate notes synchronously among themselves on a shared electronic whiteboard as the lecture proceeds.  

The technological component of Livenotes is a Java program which runs on wirelessly-networked Tablet PCs, laptops and Clio handheld tablets. The practice component is the peer instruction method of pedagogy that involves students engaging in lecture-related discussions with fellow students.  

Livenotes is promising in that:

• It is readily applicable to existing educational contexts (both inside and outside classrooms, e.g. field-trips) without changes in current instructional practices, 
• Shared electronic whiteboards, when used specifically for collaborative note-taking, is an assistive technology that integrates deaf students into "mainstream" classroom contexts, and 
• Pen computing (e.g. Tablet PCs) represents a shift from desktops to a more intuitive modality of computing and learning.