by Ivana Pelisek
Interrobang
Click here to read more Interrobang articles written by Ivana Pelisek
Published: Monday, September 21, 2009
Are you finding it difficult to take detailed notes and listen attentively to instruction at the same time? Tackling college fresh out of high school or even getting back on the horse after a lengthy absence can be an overwhelming experience for anyone; that is, of course, if you don’t have the right tools necessary for success. Lucky for you we live in an electronic age, and once again, the Internet’s got you covered.
Developed a year and a half ago, NoNotes.com offers a variety of services for the eager student and professor alike, independent of field of study. While it does not eliminate the need to attend classes, NoNotes.com allows students to concentrate (and therefore potentially participate more in discussion) on the subject matter at hand by providing typed transcriptions of course lectures. All you have to do is equip yourself with a mid-to-high quality voice recorder (available through the site), and submit each audio file for which you desire notes to their server. The team at NoNotes.com is happy to do the rest.
Consisting of approximately 45 full-time staff members, NoNotes.com’s mission is to act as a learning aid for the modern student. Once an audio file has been uploaded to their server, NoNotes.com’s employees meticulously oversee the process of ensuring that their users receive exactly what is on their recording in a typed format. Within one to three business days, students can expect to obtain access to their lecture notes via email or direct download from the website. While sign-up is free, transcription costs vary depending upon the length of each submitted file, with rates starting as low as $9.57 per hour-length class.
Erin Law, a third year PR student has always understood the importance of attending her lectures, but before NoNotes.com, she consistently struggled with attempting to capture everything her professors were saying verbatim. Through the assistance of this simple online tool, Law is now able to solely focus on her professors directives. As she explained, “I can [now] concentrate on what the prof[s are] saying…instead of making sure what they said is properly written down. [NoNotes.com] is fantastic for students who have extremely long lectures and find it difficult to multi-task by both listening and writing accurately.”
In the eyes of Matt Whittecker, director of business development (International) and one of three owners of this booming scholastically-based business, NoNotes.com can and should be “used by just about any student.” The website not only offers top-notch services that are guaranteed to make a student’s time at college or university more rewarding, but it also is extremely user-friendly. NoNotes.com could potentially eliminate the anxiety-provoking situation in which a student misses classes due to illness, if friends sign up together. But it’s not just scholars who can benefit from this venture. NoNotes.com also has unique services available for professors such as “Lesson Planning.”
What started out as a mere idea intended to ease the academic transition associated with the jump from secondary to post-secondary has expanded tremendously since the website’s inception. As explained by Whittecker, the developers behind NoNotes.com are not in it purely for mercenary rewards; they have a vision. The website’s team is hopeful that the proceeds derived from their services will be able to contribute to supporting ongoing initiatives to build new schools in developing countries. Some students who choose to utilize NoNotes.com may in fact be given the opportunity to visit sponsor locations on a paid trip to help assist with this fantastic program in the future.
As made evident by the services they provide, along with their impending “good works” aspirations, NoNotes.com is founded upon the principle of “Students Helping Students Everywhere!” And if that isn’t enough convincing to check out this exciting new learning management system, Whittecker summarized NoNotes.com succinctly, “it’s just a cool tool.” That’s something we’re certainly taking note of!
Monday, September 21, 2009
New University Article
You show up to the first day of class ready to tackle the new school year. As your professor begins to lecture, you suddenly realize that you are still in summer mode. You find that you can’t focus enough to take quality notes and can barely understand what is going on. However, if you have a voice recorder and around $9.95 to spend on each hour of class, you may not have to stay in the dark.
Nonotes.com is an innovative idea started by Matt Whitteker, a graduate of Carleton University. The Web site allows any student with a voice recorder to sit back in class and absorb the lecture. All the student has to do is sign up for an account and purchase the number of hours they will need in transcribed notes. Hours come in one, five, and 10 – hour increments. Once the account is set up, they can then upload to the Web site an audio file of the lecture in either an MP3 or Windows Media format and will receive a transcript of that lecture in one to three days.
This Web site is based on the idea that students will be able to absorb more during their lectures by listening and asking questions instead of struggling to write every word the professor says. After all, their slogan is, “You do the learning. We’ll take the notes.”
Though this may seem like a useful tool, I couldn’t help but wonder about the practicality of the circumstances. My first worry came from knowing that those who use the Web site have to use their own voice recorder to capture the lecture then upload it to the Web site. I figured if someone is taking the time to record the lecture themselves, what is stopping them from returning to the recorded lecture to brush up on any missed information?
The other issue I had stemmed from the Web site’s Q & A section. The clarity of the transcript you receive depends on the quality of the audio file you upload to the Web site. So, what would happen if you were unfortunate enough to sit in an area where chatter overrides the lecturer’s voice, or have a lecturer who doesn’t know how to turn up the volume on their microphone?
In my interview with Matt Whitteker I gained some insight as to why he created this Web site and cleared up uncertainties I had.
The idea of starting Nonotes.com came from Whitteker‘s own college experiences. While in college, he would get frustrated due to the difficulty of paying attention in class, asking questions and trying to keep up with notes all at once.
Whitteker addressed my concern about the practicality of the services by stating that, “listening to a lecture twice may help but you are bound by time. A two – hour lecture would take four hours to listen to twice whereas you could listen once with 100% attention in class then selectively study your transcript when convenient.”
In response to the audio quality paralleling the quality of the transcript you receive, Whitteker said that though accents, speech impediments or subject-specific jargon may pose a slight problem to the quality of the transcript, his team is good at deriving meaningful transcripts. If a file is unusable, the student will not be charged and will be notified of the situation.
This is just another possible way to help further your studies while here at UCI. As always, there are opportunities on campus such as the Learning and Academic Research Center (LARC) or group study sessions with friends.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
U of Richmond's The Collegian Article
Students use NoNotes in classes
Published: September 10, 2009, 2:00 am ET
Collegian Staff
At least 11 students, and perhaps professors, at the University of Richmond are using NoNotes.com, an online audio transcription service, according to Matt Whitteker, director of business development for NoNotes.com.
Students record their classes, lectures or study and tutoring sessions and upload the file. Those who work for NoNotes.com will type up and send back their class notes in one to three business days, and will also share the class notes on its server for anyone else in — or otherwise interested in — that class, according to the NoNotes.com Web site.
One hour of class time costs $11.75, and students can purchase time packages up to 10 hours for $95.75 on the Web site. Students can also purchase a special package with five hours of audio time and an audio recorder.
Thousands of students at about 200 universities are registered at NoNotes.com, Whitteker said, though he added that not all were active.
Whitteker said that even teachers could benefit from NoNotes.com, noting that it would be a great tool for self-review.
“Many teachers teach the same subject many times,” Whitteker said. “Having a transcription of lectures helps teachers refine their teaching, catch anything they may have missed and also lets them critically analyze the lecture for future improvement.”
NoNotes.com, which started two years ago and went into global production last year, is currently available only in English, though the company has accounts in the United Kingdom and as far as New Zealand, Whitteker said.
Whitteker said that he didn’t think there was a problem with students not taking their own notes.
“Our service lets you focus 100 percent on audio when it’s delivered, then 100 percent as you read and review and pick out what is meaningful,” Whitteker said.
Contact staff writer Stephen O’Hara at stephen.ohara@richmond.edu
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
U of South Florida Oracle Article
"NoNote" taking, just listening
Published: Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Updated: Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Sometimes, taking notes in class causes students to miss important lecture information. NoNotes.com is a new Web site designed to help college students avoid this problem.
According to its Web site, the goal of NoNotes.com is to “help you focus on learning while in class without having to divide your attention to take notes.” It allows you to “sit back, learn, ask questions and make the most of your class time.”
NoNotes.com founder Matt Whitteker wanted to ease the strain of note-heavy courses on students.
“Transcription services are widely used in the medical and legal field. Since students are the largest demographic of ‘note takers,’ I decided to offer the same service used by doctors and lawyers to students,” he said.
Meagan Daly, a senior in the College of Nursing, said she plans to use NoNotes.com.
“In (the College of Nursing), a majority of us record lectures because so much material is given at one time,” Daly said. “Then we spend hours listening to it over and over writing things down. That would give us more time to actually focus on the material.”
The Web site is essentially a transcription service aimed for college students. Typed notes are made from class recordings. A student records a class, uploads the audio file to the Web site and then waits for an e-mail of the transcription in 1-3 business days. Files need to be in either MP3 or Windows Media format.
The price is based on the uploaded file’s duration per hour.
Transcribing one hour of class costs $11.75. The more you buy, the more you save. There are discounted rates for five - and 10 - hour class time transcription. Five hours will save you $5 and 10 hours will save you a little over $20.
There are no policies in place to prevent sharing notes. The company actually encourages it.
“Cognitively speaking, everyone only has so much mental bandwidth,” Whitteker said. “You can’t listen to two people speak to you at the same time with 100 percent attention. Think of when you write notes. There’s a little voice in your head trying to play back what you just heard, then there is your professor speaking as well. Those two voices conflict.”
“Our service lets you focus 100 percent on audio when it’s delivered, then 100 percent as you read and review and pick out whatis
meaningful,” he said.
The Web site says that the transcription service can be used for anything from class lectures to study groups and meetings.
Whitteker said that Students with Disabilities Services at USF has registered on the Web site.
“We have several centers for students with learning disabilities that use the service as well,” he said. “It’s a great tool for students with hearing impairments and other cognitive disorders.”
He also said he has nine USF accounts registered on the site for either students or teachers.
One draw back is that the service is only useful for some classes. A transcription for a math class, where most of the instruction is visual, may pale in comparison to handwritten notes.
“Depending on the type of lecture, the transcript may be more or less useful,” Whitteker said. “The majority of the teachers and students that use our service fall under the art majors: English, history, law,
socio, etc.”
Another problem may arise if students use the service as a crutch rather than an enhancing tool. The intention to “sit back and learn” could become “sit back and check your Facebook during the entire class” for students who think the Web site can handle everything.
Joe Cole, a senior majoring in criminology and pitcher for USF’s baseball team, said he also plans to use NoNotes.com when he misses a class because of a game, but he also feels that the cost is too high to use the service for every class.
While NoNotes.com makes it easy for college students to skip class and have a friend record without consequence of missing a lecture, it could also save the grades of students who have to miss class for emergencies.
“Students often feel pressured to go to class when ill because they don’t trust other students’ note taking ability,” said Christina Hill, a senior biomedical science major. “I think that this Web site would be very useful, especially this semester. There have been a lot of cases of swine flu. I would rather a classmate have someone record the lecture than come to class.”
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Stony Brook Statesman Article
High Tech Realm: With New Technology Comes a New Way to Take Notes
Published: Thursday, September 3, 2009
Updated: Wednesday, October 7, 2009
While it would be great to sleep in class and still learn, I won’t officially condone the activity. Rather, I suggest ways to take your note taking to the next level, by using tools such as OneNote, part of the Microsoft Office Suite (office.microsoft.com) provided at no cost to students at Stony Brook University, or Evernote (www.evernote.com), which comes in free or premium versions.
Both tools are useful as they both support: organizing notes into notebooks, attaching/linking external files such as images or word documents, and adding drawings, both programs also boast features which set themselves apart from each other.
OneNote boasts a robust interface, tight integration into the Microsoft Office suite, and with an innovative recording system, which syncs your typing with audio recordings taken through OneNote. Despite the robustness of the software, OneNote is only usable on the Windows, or Windows Mobile platforms.
On the other hand, Evernote, with versions available on Windows, Mac, and the iPhone and Blackberry, stands out through its online sync feature that makes your notes accessible on internet connected computers ,with or without Evernote installed. Evernote also includes applications for the iPhone and Blackberry, although they also have support for conventional mobile browsers.
Although it is important to have great notes for class, academia is also about spreading knowledge, so why not share and exchange your notes with friends. Although you could use email or copiers for making clones, you also could use drops. Group collaboration tool Drop.io (www.drop.io) allows students to share their notes – in real time, essentially putting the classroom online. Just like a swiss army knife, Drop.io can be used in many ways; from uploading files, media, and notes, to even integrating chat rooms, conference calls, and even faxes.
When I asked Peter Frasca, community manager at Drop.io, about statistics regarding student usage, he pointed out the key aspect that sets the site apart from others – they don’t really keep track of user information, because they focus on simplicity and the needs of the user, which is an excellent alternative for student to student activities, compared to Blackboard.
Creating a drop is as simple as visiting the site, and typing in the name you want. Although free drops are limited to 100mb, users are free to create as many as they like. When I asked Peter whether they discouraged splitting of drops, he pointed out that they want users to share as much as they want – and that the premium accounts include additional features aside from extra storage.
Speaking of sharing and collaboration, how about we cover transcription? I mean, while sharing recordings of lectures is great, being able to share text documents of the work is also ideal, which is why tools such as NoNotes (www.nonotes.com) are worth consideration for making life simpler. In my interview with Matt Whitteger, director of business development at NoNotes.com, he mentioned that the idea for the service came from transcription systems in medical schools, where persons conducting autopsies would record their steps and then have the notes transcribed.
Although such services in medical school are expensive due to the excessive steps and detail involved, NoNotes is able to offer low prices as it relies on proprietary software although humans also are involved in the transcription when necessary. This model of transcription is similar to services such as ReQall (www.reqall.com) which focus on short notes – up to 30 seconds long.
Regardless of your learning style, be it auditory or visual, chances are there’s a tool to make your learning simpler. Overall the tool you pick should be based on your personal preferences and needs, so be sure to find a set of tools that works best for you.
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