<p>I am registered with the disability services office at my school for ADHD. One of my accomodations is assistance finding a note taker. They have someone in the class take their notes on carbon paper and then you get the carbon copy. I am really bad a taking notes for 2 reasons. One, I never pay attention much in class, I try really hard but I miss things a lot. Two, I am a freshman and in all my class so far in college and high school, the professor/teacher would have notes on the board or powerpoint and you would simply copy them down. I am not used to a class where the teacher just lectures and you take notes on your own. Well I have a class like that this quarter and it's the TA's first time teaching the class. It isn't hard and I like it, but he doesn't really know how the note taking thing works and neither do I cause I have never used it before. I am going to stop in the disability services office tomorrow and ask them, but I was wondering if anyone has used this accomodation before and if it works well? Also, in one of my other classes the professor goes really fast(she has a reputation as being one of the worst professors, but it is a gen ed and she is the only who teaches it) when she does powerpoint. So fast that no one can write it all down, she says don't worry about it becuase it is all in the book, but I know she is talking about the most important stuff and it always takes me a while to copy down notes so I never get them copied and then I can listen because I am frantically copying the notes. Someone asked if the powerpoints were available online and she said no. I was talking to another professor and they said the prof should give you the powerpoints if you ask. Should I ask or is that out of line? If you have anyother note taking suggestions that would be great.</p>
<p>First of all, if you have a letter of some sort from the disabilities office for the professor with the power point who talks so quickly, it is very likely that she will send you the powerpoints. It is not out of line to politely make this request. My S. had a teacher who sent him her powerpoints in HS even though this was not part of his formal accommodation, and it was very helpful. </p>
<p>Second, if the class with the fast-talking teacher is a huge, gen ed class, there is some chance that the class already has a note-taker for other LD students, and you may be able to just be added to the list of students who gets a copy of this person’s notes.</p>
<p>Third, if having a notetaker is an accommodation the college grants routinely, there must be some procedure for helping students/professors actually locate a notetaker. Dropping in and talking to someone in the disabilities office should help you get a handle on exactly what needs to happen to get you what you need. At some colleges, the notetakers notes are posted online and LD students can log onto the disabilities office site to access the notes.</p>
<p>Fourth, sometimes students who need notes can work things out with an organized fellow student informally. The TA might be able to help by asking if anyone in the class takes excellent notes and if so, if it would be possible for that student to give him a copy of those notes on a regular basis. (If the disabilities office pays notetakers, then this could be worked out, too.) Or, if you are comfortable, you could ask another student yourself.</p>
<p>Finally, does it help if you take notes on a laptop? </p>
<p>Good luck! Please let us know what happens.</p>
<p>If you have an iphone, you can download a $10.00 =application that will allow you to record the lectures (Or you can bring a recorder-get permission from disability office & prof). Then, for the gen ed fast talking prof class, re-play the lecture while underlining or highlighting important concepts in the book. When final come, copy down the highlighted information to study. Another way to do this is to bring your book to class and highlight pages/text as she lectures. Some colleges sell lecture notes online and some people unaffiliated with the college also sell notes online.</p>
<p>The above suggestions are all good ones. Ther is one other to consider. Many professors whose lectures are on powerpoint will simply email their powerpoint presentations to you, or make them available on their college webpage. You might ask about that as well. Good luck.</p>
<p>Thanks, my professor was really helpful in the one class and got a special note taker book from the disability services office and got someone in class to take notes. It is really helpful to have them. However, the other professor is never in class because she has an assistant teach it. The professor only came to the first day. I spoke to her about a note taker and she said that the disability services was supposed to do it all. I explained multiple times that I had just been there and spoken to them in person and told her exactly how it works. Her response was “I was under the impression that they take care of it” and then “maybe you could ask someone around you”. I really don’t feel comfortable asking some random kid around me and she won’t give anyone accesses to the powerpoint. She said “well it is all in your book so you don’t need it anyways”. However, it is still nice to know what stuff she highlight on etc. And some of the questions we have to answer are not in the book. She usually says “this is not in the book” however, it still isn’t enough time to copy it and she doesn’t always tell us when something isn’t in the book. I keep the book with me and try to just highlight and mark in the book and only copy what isn’t there but I have to work so frantically I can’t actually even listen to her.</p>
<p>It sounds as if you’ve done a lot to remedy the situation, with success in one class (congrats), but that the teacher who’s never there is extremely uncooperative and has refused to help. It might be good to share her statements with someone at the disability services office so perhaps they can explain to her how the accommodation system at your uni actually does work (e.g. the LD student doesn’t just ask random classmates for notes if that makes him feel uncomfortable.) It is possible, however, that this professor will never cooperate, and this being the case, your next best alternative might be to use a small casette recorder to capture all of the lectures so you can go back over them and fill in the holes in your notes after class. I realize how time consuming this will be, but until the folks at the disabilities office get the professor to cooperate, at very least by providing the power points, this might be the only way you’ll be able to keep up with the class until you have a notetaker . But do go asap to explain the situation and to see if someone at the disabilities office will intervene on your behalf in the case of a professor who isn’t following university policies. It also might be a good idea to get yourself a study group in this class. You would be able to contribute to this group, but also you could make sure you don’t have gaps in the material you’ve covered.</p>
<p>For the class with the professor who says “it’s all in the book”, it would really help if you READ the chapters before the lectures so that you can just follow along and write down anything that isn’t in the book, or make notes of what she makes a special point of discussing. Look at your course outline and try to stay a chapter ahead of the class. This will help.</p>
<p>Thanks, I have definitely been trying my best to do that, however I am behind on my readings because two thursdays ago(I am on quarters so it just started) they did the lecture over the first two chapters and it was supposed to be a 90 minute lecture but the assessment before hand ran over so she did it in 60 minutes and rushed through. The text books had a delay and came in wednesday afternoon and thursday morning so no one had time to read before that lecture. This quarter I have been swamped. It is only the end of the 2nd week and I have done 11 pages of journaling and a 4 page paper, which to me is a lot but maybe not for college. I also have work for my other two classes. We have a lot of busy work so between catching up in that class because of the text book delay, finishing all the busy work, the english and then I have an exam in each of the other classes next week I have not been able to. I would love to read it before the lecture but right now, I have been sleeping 4 hours a night and just don’t have the time to do that. I hope to get caught up next week and then following the lectures will be easier.</p>
<p>Can you drop one of your classes so that it is easier for you to catch up and then keep up? Go see your advisor on Monday and find out if it is possible.</p>
<p>At one of my kid’s colleges, note takers get paid through the DSP office but the student does sometimes have to recruit someone. If you have a list serve for the class (from group emails the teacher sends out) you can post an ad asking for help.</p>
<p>Could you bring an iPod and record the class? Then you could replay the lecture as many times as you want.</p>
<p>You do know that you will need to take less then full load? right? </p>
<p>You need to read and outline the chapters ahead of time, with margin notes. Just reading is not enough</p>
<p>The action of taking notes is what enables memory to take hold. Reading someones notes skips the memory formation part and is of limited utility.</p>
<p>No amount of notetakers is going to make up for not paying attention in class. After recording the class, you need to listen to the recording and take notes by pausing the recording. This will take a lot of time, but may be the only way to survive an non-text based class.</p>
<p>Follow the Asian model. Only take classes that rely heavily on the textbook, and study the text like crazy.</p>
<p>toadstool, the method you describe works for me. But my dyslexic son seems to have superb recall of everything he hears. This even works if he is listening to an audiobook while reading or doing math problem sets. [When he was little, we were traveling in Japan and had a guide who was describing the largest wooden Buddha in the world which was contained in a building in front of us and was discussing the history of the building. He was fooling around with his sisters while the guide was talking. My wife chastised him and asked him what the guide had said and he repeated back, essentially verbatim, her last two or three paragraphs. My wife has stopped asking over the years]. So, he doesn’t need to take notes to transfer things to memory. But, reading someone else’s notes later helps him study.</p>
<p>freshman, if the professor is correct that it is all in the book, toadstool is correct that reading the book in advance will be of great value. In my college courses, that was expected so that the professor could add to what we had already read as opposed to reviewing it.</p>
<p>that’s so true of dyslexics. One of D’s science teacher’s in eighth grade became so fascinated by her total auditory recall that he actually tested it over the course of a couple of weeks. Word-for-word, he kept saying, word-for-word “and she’s talking to other kids at the same time.” He was stunned. She can, in fact, give verbatim of two conversations at the same time. I think it’s a form of “audiographic” memory–same with books on tape. </p>
<p>Really great skill in the real world where mostly everything happens in a conversation. When I saw that the new kindle actually has an automatic read-to function, I thought, yep, books are going the way of the old fashioned ox-pulled plow. Heart-braking for an English major and writer, but joyful for the mother of a dyslexic.</p>
<p>Good luck to you with finding a note taker. I’m sure you will get much more skilled at making sure these things are in place at the start of each semester as time goes on.</p>
<p>It seems important to note that not all LD students who need notetakers have the same issues and that strategies that work for one student might not work for another. Toadstool’s advice may be very helpful for some students, but for others, the notion that relying on a notetaker implies not paying attention in class, or that using the notetaker’s notes won’t allow memory formation may not be applicable. Some students (with and without LD’s) may need to read chapters in advance; others don’t. Some do better taking margin notes; others don’t. </p>
<p>The issue here is that the OP needs a notetaker but isn’t getting one. The suggestions here seem very helpful in assisting him in finding ways to cope in the absence of the needed accommodation. But when he has a notetaker, he might be best served by using a different set of strategies.</p>
<p>I almost always rely on a note-taker or store bought notes. Have you checked out the local textbook retailers? My campus has a relationship with a place called Bill’s Bookstore which sells FSU gear, textbooks, and school supplies (and is a couple minute walk from my dorm.) They enlist note-takers and even keep previous years notes (for class and professor) on file as an added resource. One of my teachers this semester even suggested using them because she looks over the notes for Bill’s but not notetakers. Perhaps there is a notetaking service where you are?</p>
<p>Unless the slides are moving slow and the information on them is verbatim the lecture my note-taking is terrible (by the time its in one ear its out the other, very frantic process). Using student notes lets me just pay attention in class and supplement them with emphasis topics the professor especially focused on. I’ll read book and make notecards depending on the class (from the notes and the book.) I don’t learn well orally (via writing what I’m listening to.) I’m very visual. Having to write notes from recorded lectures would take too much time and make me fall behind. I will, however, practice outlining and writing portions of the notes at a time to study.</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>That’s a really great thing to know!</p>
<p>Thanks for all the advice. The note taker in the one class is really helpful. I don’t just day dream the whole class because I have a note taker though. I take my own notes as well and compare the two. This helps me realize where my note taking skills need to improve and what not and also tell what is really important. I have a lot of trouble focusing and processing auditory info, I just always have so taking notes or especially copying power points and listening is almost impossible. In my classes where I copy power points, I just spend the whole time focusing on what I am writing. It is working fine for the most part because I have good grades. Taking notes helps me focus, but I still often zone out and miss something, so having a set of notes can be a lifesaver. As for the other class, I just gave up on the note taker thing. Most of it is in the text, but not always and if you didn’t do the work before class it is hard to know. I have been behind for a while and basically doing nothing but study at the library. I am getting caught up, slowly though. So, I am going to try to have the work done before class. I bring the book with me usually and highlight the stuff since most of it is in the text and if it is not in the text I write it in there.</p>