Visual Learner? Want Great Notes? Read This!

This week I used the Note Taking Strategies: Plug-in Notes and 1 Plus 3 Notes in my Survey of Film History Class. Each strategy provided me with a different way to record notes and develop questions that would assist me later in studying for the next exam. I found that using the 1 Plus 3 note taking strategy provided me with a much more organized and visual way of keeping track of my information. After taking notes as I normally would for a lecture, I re-read my notes until I fully understood the most important pieces of information. On another sheet of paper I created three sections titled A, B, and C. Section A upheld the left top half of the paper, Section B had the larger right half of the paper, and Section C took up the bottom half of the paper. In the first section I wrote down all the most important key points, topics, and concepts I found in my notes such as “G Melies, Pathe Frères, MPPC.” In section B I created a graphic organizer, or in my case a T chart. In the T chart I matched up the most important terms or concepts with their definition or description. For example, “Max Linder – Comedian, one of the first feature film stars.” At the bottom of the page in Section C, I wrote down all the questions I would most likely seen on the exam such as “What are Cambria ‘shots’” and “Who is Giovanni Pastrone?” I found this strategy to be very effective in helping me study and remember information. This strategy gave me a way to actually use my notes to predict exam questions, and study the most important and specific information amongst all the notes I took. Most of the time, my notes are useless to me because all I see are a bunch of works mashed together, but this strategy gave meaning to the information, and in a visual way I could understand rather than attempt to interpret. I felt like this strategy was very useful in finding what information was important and which wasn’t, it gave me a chance to sit down and really review my notes to focus on the vital material. Instead of a graphic organizer as the book suggested, I adapted this strategy by creating a T-chart for me. Since I’m a visual learner, I choose this strategy because of it’s unique way of organizing potentially boring and useless notes, into understandable and visually appealing notes that could organize all my important information. I found it was useful to have a visual aid that combined terms and concepts with definitions in a way I could relate to and understand. Since my materials and sources in the course are mostly from my lecture notes and films, it is important to develop visual aids that organize this into understandable information. Most of the course is listening and can drag on, so giving myself something to do while taking notes keeps the lecture interesting and keeps me taking important notes. Since my grade in this course is solely based on the essays I write and exams that are given, it is necessary to review all parts of the films we watch, and notes I take. Luckily for me, film analyzes aren’t too difficult because films are one of my strongest area of understanding because I’m a visual learner.

I also used Plug in Notes as a note taking strategy in my Survey of Film History course. For Plus in Notes, I took notes on the lecture and films we viewed as I usually would each week. However, instead of just filling up several pages of paper full of random notes, I left spaces between my notes to fill in with organizer’s that summarized the main idea’s and the details associated with it. Each time my professor would change the topic, or switch up the main idea, I would leave spaces for creating my organizer’s that for me summed up the most important piece’s of information from the notes as a whole. For example, I created a graphic organizer on which one side it say “What Montage is?” and on the other side says, “What Montage led to?” This strategy was very effective, it helped me in organizing the main points of my notes and also giving me direction into what the next section of notes were going to be about or discuss. This strategy proved extremely helpful to me as it gave a visual appeal to my otherwise visually boring notes. Its necessary for me as a visual learner to have visual appeals that interest me and pull me in to the information so I find myself trying to read through pages of unorganized notes that have no flow. With the Plug in Method, I was able to organize the importance of each section of notes, so when it came time to review I could pick out what I needed to know, where I needed to look, and how I should go about applying this information to creating exam questions. The plug in’s really proved their worth later when I had to go back through my notes to create questions that could potentially show up on the next exam. It was easy for me, I just went through my notes, looked at my visually appealing graphic organizers, and pulled out the specific information I thought was most necessary and seemed most relevant to the main idea of that specific lecture. I ended up writing seven questions total I that found to be the most likely to be seen again. For example, one of my questions was “What is Kuleshov Effect?” to which I wrote the answer “The arrangement of images can create certain ideals. This leads to montage and the creation of non-narrative films that convey messages.” I chose this strategy specifically for its use of visual organization within the confines of my notes themselves rather than on a separate sheet of paper. I like the idea of creating organization directly within my notes, it seemed to save time, and efficiently describe the focus of the lecture in clear, concise, visual terms. As I said before, this is mostly a lecture and film based course, so I need to have a good way to pay attention during the class period. The plug in notes gives me something to think about as I’m taking notes and keep me engaged. Since I’m graded purely on my performance on exams and written essays, it’s essential that I take good notes and keep of with watching the films assigned each week. The only adaptations I made to the Plug in notes were several smaller boxes within or next to the notes I took that more clarified what I wrote in that section, or more thoroughly described a specific detail. I think pulling apart my notes to visually see the specifics will definitely aid me on up coming exams and essays. I think both of these strategies will help inspire me to become a better note taker as well as a studier. I feel with these strategies I am more equipped to fully understand the seemingly unorganized and scattered information. These strategy organize my information in a visually appealing way that I can understand and use for studying more adequately in the future.