If I had had the Livescribe Pulse Smartpen when I was in college, I think I would have been a happier student. You see, I'm an auditory learner. I absorb information by hearing things more than seeing them. Shapes and words remind me of sounds, and that's how I commit things to memory. I make flash cards, but I have to read them out loud as I study. In fact, my most effective method of memorizing facts is to record an audio tape where I say the question, leave a blank space of silence for me to answer when I listen to it, and then say the answer. I listen to the tape over and over, jumping in with the answers, until all the facts are firmly in my brain.
The one problem this causes with class notes and lectures is that, when I try to translate the words and sounds of a lecture, which my brain processes so easily, into written down words on a paper - while at the same time trying to pay attention to what's being said and not miss anything - I inevitably end up missing something. Not only that, but when it comes time to study for the test, more often than not, my experience of looking back at the notes is to gaze at the words on the paper and have an overwhelming sense of wondering why I wrote them. It's difficult to connect them back to the words that the professor was speaking at the time I wrote them down.
Well, with the Livescribe Pulse Smartpen, all of that could have been a thing of the past.
The Smartpen is a new invention that is causing quite a buzz around the web. It is a pen which roughly the size of a Magic Marker, and contained within it is either a one gigabyte or two gigabyte computer system (depending on which model you've decided to purchase).
It comes with proprietary paper, which you can either buy in spiral bound notebooks or print at home for free, which contains a command line on the bottom of each sheet. In those commands, you will find drawings that tell the pen to start recording, stop recording, playback faster, playback slower, jump ahead, or jump back.
When the pen starts recording is when the real genius of the concept begins. It not only records everything that it writes on the paper, it records all of the audio that is occurring in the room simultaneously as you are writing. The computer system inside the pen is able to sync the two together, so when you playback, you can tap any part of your notes and hear exactly what was said at that moment when you wrote them.
The incredibly useful and innovative features don't stop there, however. When you get back to your home computer, be it a desktop or a laptop, you can plug the pen into its personalized docking station and do a data dump onto your hard drive. It transfers your pages of written notes and the synced up audio into files on your computer. You can archive those files, or you can share them online. Best of all, they are keyword searchable.
The sharing feature would be particularly useful if people were in study groups. Or, to take it outside of a college setting and imagine a business application, if a company were to send a group of three employees to a conference, they could all attend different breakout sessions during the small group portions, and then post their notes, complete with audio, on the company server as an archived resource for all employees to benefit from.
Ultimately, in fact, I think that the Smartpen has many practical applications beyond taking notes in college - I feel that, just like an actual college student, it's real future is in the business sector.
No comments:
Post a Comment