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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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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
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
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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.
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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
- Sub-$500
- Quiet
- Bulletproof [once the hinge cable is fixed!]
- Easy on the batteries
- Can draw sketches as well as type
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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.
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?
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.