Making notes for university seminars and lectures is quite tricky, your in a situation where you may be following powerpoints or online lectures and want to make notes along the way right? It would also be more efficient if you could change your notes later into sections and tables, unlike written notes where you would have to write out or take up more time; Notion is the perfect online application for you! Notion describes itself as a tool that blends your everyday work apps into one. It's an all-in-one workspace for you.
Overall the application provides components such as notes, databases, kanban boards, wikis, calendars and reminders. Users can connect these components to create their own systems for knowledge management, note-taking, data management, project management, among others. (wiki)
I'll be mentioning how I use Notion and maybe inspire you to use it too!
Let's talk about the side tab which is so conveniently set out. It is easy to separate social and academic life into different templates and layouts. I have set out my pages according to my university modules; making it easier for me to locate the pages and I can even search for a specific part of notes etc by typing keywords.
(Side tab on the left)
In the screenshot to the left, you can see a task list tab so you can follow a to-do list and fit it categorically in what stage you are in. I found this very helpful and recommend it to anyone for any sort of tasks they like to organise.
There's even a journal option, which is great to write any thoughts or goals of the day/ week down and reflect upon it. You can even turn it into a casual online diary and save money and paper as I have done. I write weekly goals and reflect at the end of the week.
This is a very important template/layout for my bookworms and students who need their reading done and organised. It lets you link your books and sort them with their authors, status and publishers. Not only is this for books but also podcasts/articles and any type of content you want to review with the choice to leave ratings and review.
You can even follow your schedule, making Notion more like your online diary. I have filled in my course schedule but you can alter it to your own lifestyle!
It also filters down to different types of sections so like you can see me hovering in the view sections; I can view only the assignments or only lessons etc to make it clearer.
This is what I enjoy most about my MacBook; being able to split the screen and simultaneously listen to my lectures or extra videos and activities I need to do whilst making notes on Notion at the same time; reorganising them into sections highlighting keywords and theorists.
This is what I meant by making my notes efficiently and saving time. I was able to make this table and sort out this theory whilst my seminar was going on, as notion gives you the option of adding tables, charts, graphs, statistics, boards, timelines etc
With my note paragraphs, these are the options to highlight, make lists, make quotations, or I can add any additional comments which I can go back and look at when I'm revising.
I find toggle lists so effective for writing down group work answers as I can hide away answers after my lessons and it won't drag out my notes and take up extra space.
You can easily drag sentences and sort them out however you'd like.
On the left, I have included more options of setting and separating your notes/work effectively. The long list includes options like changing fonts, embedding files from other sites and apps. You can separate sections with different headers and coloured dividers and much more.
Like I mentioned before the list of options to set notes is very helpful in university note-taking or you can use it for your job
I find making notes with a specific font makes it look more appealing and makes me learn and work faster. There are options to export and import your files, which makes sharing them through email much easier. As shown on the left, I can even lock specific pages and you can download notion on your laptop too; my option is shown for Mac as that's the model of my laptop.
Word count is also at the bottom of this list.
Right towards the bottom of the bar, there's a tab for templates, when pressed you'll be met with a wide range of templates for different important documents. The layout is set already for you, I personally use blank documents to write my seminar and lecture notes on as it's then easy to imbed my own links, readings and powerpoints etc. The picture below shows the different templates for a student.
You can add classmates or colleagues to share your notes or work with which is great!
Advanced options would be for creating groups etc. I am using Notion for free and when a classmate needs some notes, I export my files.
I hope you found the use of Notion helpful and consider this a choice to make your notes with. You can make it look as aesthetic and fancy as you want like I have seen various students do in their youtube vlogs. Remember it is free and saves a lot of time. Good luck with writing your notes and work!
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