Note Taking - What is the Best Way?

While I have a lot of less traditional ways of teaching (in case you haven't figured it out from my blogs), I still do have the kids do some note taking.  Here I have struggled in asking whether or not even this part of my teaching is up with the times.  It was interesting this year when several of my AP students decided to do collective note taking using Google Docs.  At first I was hesitant fearing that the kids were not paying attention (since they could communicate through the notes), but I checked in and watched their faces a lot (to see if they were laughing when they should not have been and paying attention when they should have been) and it seemed to work fairly well.  But in talking to a fellow AP teacher as part of preparing for a summer institute I am doing tomorrow, we agreed that the way we learned is not necessarily the only way in that kids can take the traditional Cornell style notes, but also the type (which I like) where you split the page and add class notes to the ones you did while reading or even using web notes for the visual learner.  Here is a nice way of looking at those differences.