Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Telegraphic Note-Taking

I can't remember where I read the phrase "telegraphic note-taking". It refers to how students learn to reduce their note-taking to the absolutely essential. It made perfect sense to me.

Until I realized that today's students have no clue what a telegram is, or why people tried to limit the number of words in them.

What does make sense to them is the concept of "TM note-taking" - that is, abbreviating and eliminating unnecessary words, as they do for Text-Messages.