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Note Taking Devices for Students?
Gavin Scott asks: "I'm looking for solutions for a college student who needs an inexpensive mechanism for note taking in class. She suffers from a condition that makes writing notes out by hand slow and painful. One of the small sexy sub-notebook computers would be ideal, but at $1,500-$2,500 these are completely out of reach budget-wise. She has a perfectly good desktop system at home, so something that simply allowed typing in notes that could then be transferred to the PC would be ideal. I've considered things like a Palm-type device with an external keyboard, but I'm interested in knowing what other options people might suggest. Or any opinions on what kind of lightweight almost-laptop devices are good in, say, the sub-$500 range?"
Universities usually have an office for dealing with disabilities like what you mention. They can help with special arrangements if needed. I know this isn't what you wanted, but if note-taking is slow and painful, imagine what taking an exam would be like. :/
As for hardware, I would recommend a laptop. They'd be of much greater use than a PDA would (from experience).
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Might not be entirely ideal but it's a fairly quick way of making notes and they aren't massively expensive.
Texas Instruments makes a keyboard compatible with some of their (older) graphing calculators. With their NoteFolio program it cant be too hard to take notes in class with a graphing calculator like the TI-89 and the keyboard. http://education.ti.com/us/product/accessory/keybo ard/features/features.html
How about a small voice recorder and a digital camera ? Less than $500 and very effective.
Dell sells a lot of stuff on eBay. Most of it consists of refurbs and returned leases. Probably pretty good for saving a load on a lightweight laptop. http://stores.ebay.com/Dell-Financial-Services
There is a difference between "insightful" and "inciteful" other than spelling.
Assuming you're in the US, each state has a Voc Rehab department which provides funding for the disabled going to college. They pay for the entire tuition for me, and my books as well. Sounds like she has a fully qualifying disablity, so VR should be able to buy her a laptop. They did buy me one too, and it was $1800. Just find a VR office in your area and arrange a meeting with the counselor. Also bring proof (doctor's note, records, etc.) of the disability.
"Black holes are where God divided by zero." - Steve Wright
It's durable and has a full keyboard. You should be able to pick up one of the year or so old G3 models for about $500. For that price, expect a 700-odd mhz snow (white) model. Those have 1024x768 displays. The older color, toilet-seat style models have 800x600 displays and because of that I wouldn't recommend them.
When I advertised on Craigslist (LA) for an Apple laptop, I got a PowerBook G4 (original model) for $600. However, for a student the iBook might be better because it's closer to being indestructible.
If you don't like Apple, any used laptop would probably do better than a PDA, even with a keyboard attachment. I used a color palm with the keyboard attachment for a while, and I found that the keyboard folded up on me whenever I tried to type! She would have similar problems, especially considering her health situation.
For a non-Apple laptop, the best quality is probably an IBM ThinkPad. Older ones are dirt cheap, and they will still run reliably and connect up to the mother ship to send back the notes.
If she wants something fuss-free, though, I really don't think you can beat an iBook.
Hope that helps.
D
Affixing Bionic Arms.
Perhaps you could try to get her into some kind of pilot program so that it doesn't cost her anything. Then not only will she be able to take notes, perhaps with her new super-human strength she could fight crime on the side.
Seriously though, I think the palm idea is a good one. A notebook is a lot to lug around, and the head aches involved with an out of date one (the kind you will get for sub $500) may not be worth it. I picked up my last laptop ($350) for this very purpose, and the stinking hard drive crashed on me in the first month. Laptop components take a lot more abuse than desktop computers, so it is worthwhile to consider the wear and tear a used laptop has already endured.
A palm (or other pda) on the other hand doesn't have any moving parts, so they are a lot harder to break.
- Sub-$500
- Quiet
- Bulletproof [once the hinge cable is fixed!]
- Easy on the batteries
- Can draw sketches as well as type
NewtonTalk email list"You might as well get your son a ticket to hell as give him a five string banjo." -unknown minister
The now End-Of-Life apple Emate would be PERFECT for what youre talking about. It was basically an Apple newton in a small laptop form factor. If I remember correctly Apple marketted them to schoolkids for this exact purpose. Here's a nice synopsis at everymac.
It can at least sync back to a mac, getting it to sync back to a PC shouldnt be a problem. They're SUPER cheap on ebay.
Battery life.
Even a brand new battery may not have the kind of battery-life required for a daily class schedule. A pda will last much longer. Either way, expect to have to recharge daily.
At my university if there is a student that may be unable to take notes for a class due to a disability then all he/she needs to do is inform the dean of students. They get in contact with the professor and the prof makes an announcement in class that they are looking for someone with good hand writing to take detailed notes. They make copies of the notes for the person with the disability and pay the note taker a small fee for their extra work. You may want to check to see if your college provides this, it beats spending hundreds or thousands on some piece of equipment.
http://almostsmart.com
I'm not going to remember the name right now but I spoke to a writer at a conference recently -- the device just had a tiny lcd attached to a keyboard. she plugged it into the usb port on one of the public desktops there and uploaded the text to wordpad. it was pretty cool. she said she got it because she didn't have the money for a laptop so it can't be that expensive.
here's one i found quickly on google. http://www.calcuscribe.com/missing.html
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
AlphaSmart has a few products that may interest you. The AlphaSmart 3000 (US$200)is a dumb keyboard which stores about 100 pages of text, and 3 AA batteries run it for 300-700 hours. If you need to take notes involving graphics, the Dana (US$400), which is a Palm OS hybrid, may be the right thing. The Dana Wireless also has Wi-Fi access.
For something with a bit more power than the 3000 but not a full Palm OS hybrid, you may be interested in the Neo, which is due to be released in September.
Recently finished degree, had palm 3xe and folding keyboard, took all my notes, super easy to carry and small enough to use on any desk. No problems with battery life either, no way any laptop can make it thru a full day of classes without being plugged in...
I got an old NEC mobilepro for similar requirements. It's small, has a keyboard similiar to handheld keyboards and is nice and cheap. The only problem I had was that it ran WinCE 2.11. That version of CE prevented me from using my wifi card with it. So I installed BSD on it and now it works perfectly for viewing, editing, and transfering files on the go.
As long as the student in question has good eyesight (or good eyesight correction), you can spend a few bucks on a Palm M100 (probably find them used for $20-40) and a cheapo keyboard. If you scrounged eBay, you could probably find them for less than $50 USD together. They're small and portable, can fit in a purse, and 2 megs of memory is more than enough for a day's worth of notes.
Another option would be to get one of the fancy Sony ones with cameras, whcih can also capture overhead screens.
--Dan
The Alpha Smart is exactly the device you are looking for.
It's used primarily (and geared toward) the K-12 education market for students exactly like the one you described.
They are excellent for notetaking and incredibly simple to use. The essential idea is that it's like a miniature word processor that will repeat your keystrokes once you plug it into the computer. Of course, you can edit what you're typing on the builtin LCD.
With the original Alpha Smart (not being produced anymore, but easily findable on Ebay) and the 3000 ($200 direct) interfacing with the computer is embarassingly simple. Simply plug the thing into ANY PC or Mac's keyboard (has ADB and PS2 -- the new ones also have USB), open Word, hit send, and it mimicks a keyboard typing the document. No software required.
That's $200, easily within your price range. I've used them in the school I work in, and find them to be an incredible tool for the students which need them.
If you want something more advanced, $400 will fetch you a similar device with a bigger screen powered by palmOS and 802.11 built in. I've never used them, but with alphasmart's reputation, I expect it to be just as good.
Oh yeah. Did I mention it's designed for K-12? They're durable as hell. I've seen them take a serious beating without being damaged. Thank god for no moving parts and shatter resistant plastic!
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I am not a l33t hardware guy, or anything, but this gives me an idea for a product:
... and which buffers your keystrokes into a couple of K of RAM, then writes it all out to a CF card (or flash card standard of your choice).
... just increment a pointer on every keystroke, writing the scan code into the cell; decrement the ptr on backspace ...
.. maybe even around $25 (given enough volume ... keyboards are < $10 nowadays).
a device consisting of a keyboard, with a 1 line LCD Screen across the top (can even be segmented, like on a cheesy calculator), that allows you to type, and see what you are typing, and not much else
Maybe even skip the flash; just have a MB of RAM; that's it. the KB could have a regular old kb connector, and you can hit a special key sequence to dump the memory to the KB Port. (The software here would be SO simple
The point is, this could be manufactured REALLY cheap; and would be ideal for taking notes. You could even outfit it with the guts of one of these to take snapshots of blackboards, etc.
It would seem like something like this could sell for < $50
Even starving college kids could afford one.
I just used a laptop. A cheap one, either used or closeout. I got one partway through high school, which then lasted until my senior year of college. Walmart is selling new generic ones for a few hundered now.
The trick is to set up style sheets and macros and such for Word to allow you to get all of the symbols and stuff.
Of course, typing may not help too much if you have hand problems.
Most unversities, when faced with a student who has a medically documented problem taking notes the normal way, will generally provide you with "accomidations". All you need is a doctor to vouch for you. Accomodiations will generally be some sort of notetaking service, at least.
Different schools do it differently. Some schools can move heaven and earth for you if you have a documented dissability.
Gentoo Sucks
http://www.club100.org/
Check 'em out. Cheap, unbreakable, full-size keyboard.
Sure. $250 for the first and $25,000 for the second.
This post written under Gentoo-linux with an SCO IP license.
whatever happened to using a micro cassette recorder?
retrobox.com has a fantastic selection as well - the HP Omnibook 6000 I'm typing this on, a PII700 w/384 meg ram, came from there(just over $300)
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...Rob
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They have a reasonable keyboard, Windows OS, a voice recorder if you need it, plus the usual Microsoft apps. No messing around when you get back to home base, either, you just sync it and you're good to go on your desktop with what you've done during the day on the palmtop.
It's called dysgraphia. You'll note that about halfway down the page is "Some physicians recommend that individuals with dysgraphia use computers to avoid the problems of handwriting."
I'd recommend getting a used but still in good shape laptop + new battery. Until fairly recently, I was using a 366mhz iBook (clamshell, baby!) for taking notes, and with a brand new battery I could make it through all my classes no problem. Shop around Craig's List, and since you're at a University, picking up a laptop on the cheap should be easy (my school surpluses them fairly routinely -- lately I've been seeing Lombards and Wallstreets -- and kids are always selling them towards the end of the quarter for extra cash) Set it up with a minimal OS installation, a text editor, and you should be good to go. I especially liked my old iBook, because it was really really energy efficient. As in, I could leave it sleeping for days and it would lose less than 1% of it's battery. (Unlike my powerbook, which slowly leaks power during sleep. Grr.)
i use an ipod with a griffin italk, it works fantastically. i'm told it's better than the belkin, particularly the inbuilt speaker. having a copy of the lecture, along with the notes i jot at the time, helps a lot when exam time comes, i find.