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Also, something like a Livescribe pen that records what you right might be the ultimate setup. You're letting your team use tools they're already familiar and comfortable with (ballpoint pens) while still getting the advantages of recording notes as they're taken.

OP: know how you hate it when work gives you some weird-ass, nonstandard tool to do your job ("we've decided to standardize on programming editors!")? Yeah. Why would you want to do that to everyone else?

I would recommend a livescribe pen. You get the best both worlds. You use the pen with their paper - which you can download a pdf template for free from their website. And you can download what you have written, as well as any conversations that were going on while you writing on your computer which is then indexed.

The only downside is that it is an electronic device and needs to be treated as such. I had it in my soft tote book bag in the back of my car for a couple of weeks and it got banged around and broke. At $150-$240 apiece treating it like just another pen was an expensive mistake.

But even with that downside if you take good care of it the Livescribe is awesome!

Different people learn differently. Consider the possibility that you are simply not using the learning style best suited to you. There are tools to help with this.

The sleep thing as well, obviously. But consider that you may not have a fruitful approach to learning in general.

Normal people don't strap these sensors to their fingers (where there is no room for batteries), they put them in a pen. Normal people also don't use bar codes that weren't designed for the purpose, they use patterns that work much better for determining position. So, normal people just buy a Logitech IO2 or the Livescribe pen.

http://www.livescribe.com/en-us/smartpen/echo/

Some time ago I ran across these interesting earbuds:

http://www.livescribe.com/en-us/smartpen/pulse/accessories.html

With a bit of hacking it is possible to break out the mics and the speakers.

With that done one would just need to build out some hardware to digitize the mic inputs and process them appropriately to produce some useful amplification/filtering functions.

I have used them for binaural recording, they work quite well. Others who have heard the recordings say it was just like being there. For those who are familiar with binaural filter arrays, it it far from perfect. However, as is often the case that 'perfect' is the enemy of 'good enough'. YMMV

I think a decent processing system could be developed using a XMOS L2 device and a Cirrus Logic 24 bit codec. Bonus points for adding recording functions and audio file playback. A more advanced device might add dual-channel bluetooth to the mix.

agreed. a good friend of mine used this in college, i was impressed. http://www.livescribe.com./ disclaimer: i'm not affiliated with the product or company in any way.

OK, this may be a bit luddite, but I still prefer a pen to take notes.

The Livescribe Echo pen takes notes on special paper, which you then play into a program on your PC (Mac or Windows). The killer is that you can:

a - do keyword searches in your HAND WRITTEN notes. Amazingly, it can even deal with my handwriting..

b - record sound at the same time as taking notes. When you listen to the recording, you can see your notes being taken at the same time. In reverse, if you wonder why you wrote something down, just click on the notes and the accompanying audio will be played back. Please note, however, that such recordings may be illegal in some circumstances, so be careful with that.

Naturally you can also dump PDFs of your notes to send them to others.

I use this stuff because it simply works..

OK, this may be a bit luddite, but I still prefer a pen to take notes.

The Livescribe Echo pen takes notes on special paper, which you then play into a program on your PC (Mac or Windows). The killer is that you can:

a - do keyword searches in your HAND WRITTEN notes. Amazingly, it can even deal with my handwriting..

b - record sound at the same time as taking notes. When you listen to the recording, you can see your notes being taken at the same time. In reverse, if you wonder why you wrote something down, just click on the notes and the accompanying audio will be played back. Please note, however, that such recordings may be illegal in some circumstances, so be careful with that.

Naturally you can also dump PDFs of your notes to send them to others.

I use this stuff because it simply works..

... because you need to transfer or scan your notes in later.

Yes, not much beats a pen and paper. For the best of both worlds there is Livescribe

This.

If you want to take notes freely, and be able to view them later electronically, without the hassle that notebooks / tablets have, with all of the benefits of Pen and Paper then Livescribe is an excellent solution. The Livescribe FAQ is a good overview.

From memory, you can also print your own 'books' to record on with the Livescribe pen.

I recommend this for office managers, particularly in IT, university students, teachers .. anyone who has a need to write lots of notes with words and pictures that they will need to reference on a computer later.

Pros:
The 2 GB pen is enough space for most purposes. Recharge via USB is easy.

Cons:
Need to buy replacement 'books'.

The best part about this is that you only every need to carry around one 'pad'. If you have uploaded from a previous pad or session, you can access it from your computer when you need to. Wonderful.

If I was going to uni today then this is what I would be using. The only drawback I can see is that you'd want to be sitting closer to the front.. apparently the Livescribe pens can pick up from 50 feet away (15 meters). YMMV?

I've yet to see anything beat this, for the current range of technology available. If anyone knows of anything better .. please reply..

This.

If you want to take notes freely, and be able to view them later electronically, without the hassle that notebooks / tablets have, with all of the benefits of Pen and Paper then Livescribe is an excellent solution. The Livescribe FAQ is a good overview.

From memory, you can also print your own 'books' to record on with the Livescribe pen.

I recommend this for office managers, particularly in IT, university students, teachers .. anyone who has a need to write lots of notes with words and pictures that they will need to reference on a computer later.

Pros:
The 2 GB pen is enough space for most purposes. Recharge via USB is easy.

Cons:
Need to buy replacement 'books'.

The best part about this is that you only every need to carry around one 'pad'. If you have uploaded from a previous pad or session, you can access it from your computer when you need to. Wonderful.

If I was going to uni today then this is what I would be using. The only drawback I can see is that you'd want to be sitting closer to the front.. apparently the Livescribe pens can pick up from 50 feet away (15 meters). YMMV?

I've yet to see anything beat this, for the current range of technology available. If anyone knows of anything better .. please reply..

The pain of taking notes by computer depends a lot on what the note-taker is used to, as illustrated by the differences in preference (and generations) between my daughter and I. My daughter, now a graduate student and I disagree on this. I do better with pen and paper. I didn't do much typing until well after I graduated, and I am still distracted sometimes by the process of note taking. My daughter doesn't have that problem, and has typed notes for a number of her classes on a laptop. While she really can type much faster than she can write notes, diagrams still stymy her when she has only a keyboard. So for some people hand written is faster than typing depending on typing ability and the number of diagrams a person may have to make. But not for all people.

She has recently acquired an iPad and has started using a note taking app that allows use of a stylus to take notes, make drawings, diagrams, etc. all in the same file smoothly and continuously. But essentially she's back to pen and paper. Just digital.

The big advantage of a tablet (I'm not stuck on iPad) is size, weight, quick access to notes, easy transfer and duplication (as long as they can be put in a "common" format like jpeg or tiff and maybe, eventually, handwriting recognition.

Another device that's sort of halfway between the two is the LiveScribe SmartPen that records the pen movement while you write on a special paper (which, it appears, is printable by laser printers so you're not stuck with buying from LiveScribe), and then uploads to your computer when you plug it in via USB. The pen can also make an audio recording and cross link your writing to the appropriate point in the audio. I haven't used it, but I know someone who loves it.

Honestly: Your wife should use the classic combo of Pen and Paper. If it *must* be electronical, nothing beats the Livescribe System. It's basically the best of both worlds.

The HTC Flyer Android Tablet has a pen system integrated aswell, but that only lasts 5 hrs on one load. And it probalby breaks if you drop it or it gets wet. Not really an alternative, if you ask me.

My 2 cents.

How about something like this: Livescribe Pen?

I've never used one, but it seems like a good idea to me. In particular is the ability to hear the recording at the time a note was taken. That way, the notes don't have to be much more than a way to "fast forward" the the relevant part of the lecture.

I use a Livescribe pen ( http://www.livescribe.com/ )and a tablet for any pdf files. I bought an HP at fire sale prices but many of my classmates have an iPad. As I understand it Evernote on the iPad is good. On the Touchpad it is not usable as an app. The website is usable and actually works quite well, but you have to be connected.

With all of that said, the Livescribe pen is the best for me. It records the lecture (with prof permission), digitizes the notes, and then syncs the notes with the audio. So I can click on a word and hear what the prof said at that exact moment in the lecture. Makes studying for tests a lot easier. You can then view your notes on your tablet for studying or what have you. Drawing graphs can be done easily when writing. Not so easy when typing. I also agree with an earlier post that said typing is just annoying to others. I have also had multiple profs ban laptops in the class as some students would spend too much time on Facebook.

While this does not really solve the OP's issue as expected, it might be a worthwhile consideration. LiveScribe is a digital pen which can be used to take down notes on digital paper in tandem with audio recording capabilities. As a result, you can listen to a lecture as you go through your notes along with a bunch of other features. While this is nifty in itself, you can also hook up the paper/tablet to a laptop and digitise it effectively in real time. While you can buy everything including the paper from the store, I believe that you can also print the paper yourself at 600dpi.

My information on this is purely based on hearsay and I have not tested it out myself. I'm very curious as to how well this tablet approach works and if we can do away with the paper concept altogether and replace it with something like an Etch A Sketch.

I believe that EverNote also supports integration with tablets etc., and might also be worth looking into.

While this does not really solve the OP's issue as expected, it might be a worthwhile consideration. LiveScribe is a digital pen which can be used to take down notes on digital paper in tandem with audio recording capabilities. As a result, you can listen to a lecture as you go through your notes along with a bunch of other features. While this is nifty in itself, you can also hook up the paper/tablet to a laptop and digitise it effectively in real time. While you can buy everything including the paper from the store, I believe that you can also print the paper yourself at 600dpi.

My information on this is purely based on hearsay and I have not tested it out myself. I'm very curious as to how well this tablet approach works and if we can do away with the paper concept altogether and replace it with something like an Etch A Sketch.

I believe that EverNote also supports integration with tablets etc., and might also be worth looking into.

This doesn't meet the ground rules you laid out, but you could consider taking notes on paper and then getting electronic copies of them.

I'm thinking of the Livescribe products. It's a smart pen/dot paper combination. The big additional win from the Echo or Pulse smartpen is that it will record audio while notetaking. There is an add-on app for the pen that lets you use it as a stylus for your mouse cursor on the laptop (the pen must be tethered to the laptop with a usb cable). I've never used that aspect of the pen.

The recorded audio can be cued up after class by just pointed to the note you wrote at the same time, as well as by more normal play/pause/scrub controls.

Also, the handwritten text can be searched in the base desktop application. There is an additional software that will convert the handwritten image to fully editable text - but again, I haven't bought it or used it.

You can also send complete audio/image combinations to an online account and sync them with your iPad/iPhone, so you don't need to carry around all your notebooks just to read them, though you will need them if you'd like to take new notes (assuming you keep one notebook per class, as intended)

To be honest, I bought this long after school, because I thought it was so damn cool. I haven't had much call to use it, so I can't really be for or against it. Anyone else use it in an actual class?

http://www.livescribe.com/

There are a couple of really nice uses for one of these,

• Taking notes in class. For anything that isn't straight text (math, chemistry, graphics, etc) pens still win hugely in speed over any computer input device. Trying to do any sort of detailed sketch on an iPad is a joke.
• Walking students through a problem- write out the problem and my thoughts in real time, then save and upload. Instant tutorial
• Tense department meetings/vendor discussions. We're having issues with one vendor right now, and I record every freaking thing they say on the phone. I've resisted the temptation so far to go back and play back the audio of some of the discussion, but it's the ultimate trump card. I can find any chunk of audio in seconds since my text notes are synced- no more scrubbing through mp3s trying to find it.

As a bonus, they don't rape you on the paper- you can buy nice notebooks for a few bucks more than standard, or just print the PDF files they give you. The development kit for custom apps is free as well.

I think that the principle of operation is different. It projects a known pattern and then identifies the position of each dot as read by the IR camera. I think the pattern is similar to this one . Based on that it is able to compute the distance to every dot.

Two semesters ago (as a student), I had a Calculus 3 class that was supposed to be in a "smart" classroom, complete with surround sound, projector, PC and Mac, automatically dimming lights, etc. Due to enrollment, the class got moved to a different classroom that had an old fashioned overhead projector and a blank space on the wall instead of a screen. The professor wanted to use the smart classroom, but we were ultimately stuck in the low tech "normal" classroom, so he printed his lecture notes (skeletal notes, which we filled in during the lectures in class) to transparencies, and uploaded the notes to Blackboard. (The main reason for wanting the smart classroom was being able to show graphs using Winplot and similar tools.)

I learned the material in that class from taking good notes, doing the homework, working with classmates, and reviewing the notes-- which I would have needed to do anyway. I never missed the "smart" stuff.

The same semester, I had a Zoology class that was in a smart classroom, and was based on Powerpoint presentations that included video clips and animations. Most of the time, the video presentations were distractions- they were meant to enhance the reading and lecture, but I never felt they did. Some of the animations (DNA replication) were useful, if they weren't longer than a couple of minutes. Again, I learned the most from taking good notes, reading the material, and working with other students.

On the student side of the class, I use a Livescribe Pulse Smartpen to record lectures along with my notes, and find that very useful-- but I leave my laptop in my bag.

Like my LiveScribe pen/notebook?

Not to be a shill, but I've been using the Livescribe Pulsepen for about a year and it's perfect for class notes. It records what you write then uploads your notes to your computer, along with audio that is sync'd to your notes, so you can hear what was being said while you were writing. You can convert notes to text using 3rd party software, but I've found it to be better just to leave it in handwritten form. The search function actually works pretty well for handwritten notes.

The $150 Livescribe Smartpen already exceeds the price of a tablet pc. Not only that, but the Smartpen requires $5 notebooks to work

The Livescribe Smartpen would probably make a good alternative if you're in a class that forbids laptops or don't have access to a power outlet since this review claims it'll last over a week between charges, but I can't see spending $150 on a pen when you can buy a fully functional Tablet PC for about the same price.

The $150 Livescribe Smartpen already exceeds the price of a tablet pc. Not only that, but the Smartpen requires $5 notebooks to work

The Livescribe Smartpen would probably make a good alternative if you're in a class that forbids laptops or don't have access to a power outlet since this review claims it'll last over a week between charges, but I can't see spending $150 on a pen when you can buy a fully functional Tablet PC for about the same price.

Livescribe http://www.livescribe.com/ is a pretty good tool/idea.
It records sound as you take your notes syncing up the two, then you are able to click on points in the notes and play back the sound at the time the note was taken.
Only downsides is there isn't a direct way to download to your computer, you have to use their web service , so it is no go at work. And there isn't any linux support.

I have used pulse pen http://www.livescribe.com/Smartpen/index.html for a few years it records audio and text to be transfered to PC

Not true.

http://www.livescribe.com/

http://www.livescribe.com/

It uses a bit of hightech and a special patterned paper to give a seamless experience. It's the same anoto technology as the Logitech IO, but now they let you print your own paper.

http://www.livescribe.com/

I have one of these, and I wish I had one at uni/school. it's awesome. go look at it.

http://www.livescribe.com/ might be just the thing for you: handwritten notes, digitized without scanning, and bonus audio (and anchored references) to boot.

I've been using the Livescribe since June of this year in my meetings, and it'd be perfect for this use, particularly if you're the lecturer (vs. listening to the lecturer in a large hall).

Livescribe records your handwriting and your audio, synchronizes them, allow you to play back your audio from any point in the recording by touching the spot in the notes later (on the notebook, or on your computer), and allows you to upload the notes and audio to a community site. It does a really good job at recording your voice, and there's room for many hours of it on the pen. It's a good writing instrument (much better than the cheap-ballpoint tip in the "Fly Pentop" which uses the same handwriting technology, but doesn't record audio, isn't as polished an experience).

You'll want the pen, and a few of the hardback journals (so they provide something solid to write on as you pace or stroll).

the 2GB pen (vs. the 1GB) is $199, can find it at any Target, and comes with one Livescribe notebook (you'll need to use Livescribe's special paper, but they offer a number of good, flexible and classy options).

Much lighter than a pentop, and arguably less fragile, less of a theft target.

Only downsides:

• The pen is completely round and will roll off your podium if you don't tend to it. When it hits the floor, it will break.
• If it does so prior to a synchronization with your Mac or PC, you'll lose whatever's on it and not-yet-synced.
• You can't move pen content back onto the pen.
• You don't have any control over line weight. If you sketch a lot, you'll have to double- or triple- stroke lines to add weight, learn to crosshatch for shadowing and filling.
• You'll run out of ink before you run out of paper - keep spares around.
• Finally the Mac and PC software uses different data models, and you can't exchange data between the two, nor move from one platform to the other.

These things don't stop the pen from being quite useful. More info at Livescribe site.

I've been going back to school in my middle age for some graduate physics courses, and taking good notes while at the same time trying to pay attention to the teacher is hard for me.

I found the Pulse Smartpen I purchased for $150 to more than pay for itself (if I place any value on my time). I simply tap the illegible scrawl, and it replays what the teacher said at that point. Just as important, my notes are necessarily incomplete, and sometimes a few crucial missing words - esp. in math/physics - can make the notes incomprehensible. With the Smartpen I can easily replay problematic areas over and over until I have grasped the concept and filled in additional notes on it.

I've even become somewhat dependent on it: if I forget to bring it to class, I feel a vague sense of panic. (I don't mean this as a plug, although I like the product. There are probably others too but the Pulse Smartpen is what I'm familiar with.)