Should students take notes any more?

Few days back I came across an article in The Hindu newspaper. It talks about something very important. It is very relevant to teachers and trainers.

The practice of taking notes in classroom is coming down. Teachers come with their PowerPoint slides and later share it with their students. Then why should students take notes? This is why students have stopped taking notes. Sometimes teachers also encourage students not to take notes, since they will be sharing slides after the class.

I can empathize with this. At times, even I have been guilty of this. Guilty because we should never stop people from taking notes.

The slides are your side of the story. The teachers side of the story.
The notes are my side of the story. The audiences' side.
The two sides are not one and the same.

This is why, taking notes needs to be encouraged. Do not discourage students from taking notes when you are presenting. The author says, "When the set of slides becomes the only reference material for the class, you actually lose some important parts of the classroom dynamic — your own ideas and thoughts that were triggered by the lecture, and the teacher’s additional comments that may not have found their way into the slides. Good notes contain more than the teacher’s lecture word-for-word, but they are like a commentary, often containing points that help you follow through on what was discussed in class."