Chris Aldrich

I'm always kind of surprised that in situations like these that people aren't using some of the newer technological advances that take simultaneous advantage of research like that mentioned in the article, but also newer as well as older technology. In particular, I always recommend some of the technology by Livescribe who make the Pulse and Echo smart pens (http://livescribe.com). These technologies use traditional pens which have embedded optical scanners and microphones so that both the written words and the spoken parts of lectures are recorded - and more importantly they're directly connected within the technology. This can allow students (disabled or not) to capture all of the spoken lecture and even allow them to go back later and supplement their notes. Bookmarking technology built in also allows one to easily come back to important points to to easily skip around within the lecture to quickly find the portions they'd like to relisten to or add additional notes to. For those who caught most of the lecture the first time, they can use signal processing technology built in to listen to the lecture at 1.5 and 2x speed for quick reviews. Because the electronic files for these pens are sharable, if a student misses class, they can literally get the notes from someone else and not have missed anything (except for perhaps visual aids, but these can be easily photographed with any cell phone). I'll also mention that one's notes can be pushed through additional optical scanning software and be converted from handwriting to type if necessary.

Additionally, one commenter spoke about learning touch-typing, but I don't think anyone mentioned shorthand, which isn't taught very frequently anymore, but it can be highly useful in educational settings. As an excellent example meshing both Livescribe and shorthand I recommend Dennis Hollier's article (The Atlantic, June 2014) "How to Write 225 Words Per MinuteWith a Pen" (http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/yeah-i-still-use-shorthand-and-a-smartpen/373281/). Another related tool which seems to have gone out of vogue in the late 19th century is memory training for improving studying/recall. I've written in the past how the Major memory system is identical to the method behind Gregg Shorthand thereby making both easier to remember and use (http://boffosocko.com/2014/07/05/the-mnemonic-major-system-and-gregg-shorthand-have-the-same-underlying-structure/).