Taking notes is an essential part of learning and retaining information. Traditionally, students and professionals have relied on pen and paper to jot down important points from lectures, meetings, and their research.
1. Increased legibility
Trying to decipher handwritten notes days or weeks after they were taken is frustratingly difficult, if not impossible. Our handwriting is often rushed and sloppy when taking notes by hand. Online notes, however, are typed and therefore legible. You quickly scan through notes without having to stop and figure out what your handwriting means. The increased legibility of digital notes makes them much more usable for studying and future reference.
2. Better organization
Paper notebooks are constrained by physical limitations – pages fill up quickly, and organizing large amounts of notes be challenging. Online notes, however, be easily organized with headings, bullet points, paragraph breaks, and more. Note also be tagged by keywords, moved around, and searched – making it easy to find that snippet you need from the copious pages of notes you’ve taken on a topic. Taking organized, searchable notes makes retrieving and using them more efficient.
3. Accessibility across devices
One major limitation of paper notebooks is that your notesonline are stuck in that physical container. If you don’t have the notebook with you, you don’t have access to your notes. Online notes are stored in the cloud, so you pull them up on any device whenever and wherever you need them. Your notes will be accessible on your laptop, tablet, and smartphone, allowing seamless access.
4. Collaborative sharing
Trying to collaborate and share paper notes requires scanning, emailing, faxing, or physically passing notebooks around. Digital notes easily be shared and collaborated on using cloud-based apps like Evernote, OneNote, and Google Docs. Classmates, colleagues, or team members update shared online notebooks in real time. It enables easy remote collaboration, brainstorming, and division of research work.
5. Multimedia integration
It’s impossible to embed photos, audio clips, videos, PDFs, and other multimedia directly into physical notebooks. Online notes enable you to integrate multimedia to add richness and context.
Having visuals, audio, and video supplement and complement your written notes aids learning and makes notes more useful when reviewing. The multimedia capabilities of online notes turn them into powerful reference resources.
6. AutoSave
Have you ever lost hours of handwritten notes due to a spilled coffee or ink running out at a critical juncture? Online notes are saved automatically to the cloud, so content is never lost accidentally. With auto-save, you also don’t have to stop to manually save your work. Your online notes are continuously saved as you type. This enables you to focus on your notes without worry.
7. Environmentally friendly
Vast amounts of paper are used around the world for taking notes in notebooks. This logging and paper production takes a heavy toll on the environment. Online notes are paperless and environmentally friendly. Switching to digital notes reduces your carbon footprint, saves trees, and shrinks your contribution to overflowing landfills. Going green has never been easier.
8. Cost savings
Good quality notebooks and pens aren’t free, and the costs add up over the years for students and professionals. Digital notes don’t require any extra expenditure on supplies. Most online note-taking apps are also free or have a very low cost. Not having to buy notebooks, pens, pencils, highlighters, binders, hole punchers, divider tabs, and other supplies represents noticeable cost savings.
