AI, Tech Tools, and the Writing Process

Student access to AI has created a situation in which educators must consider when AI should and should not be used. I think about this question by considering the difference between what skill or skills are the focus of instruction and whether AI will replace a skill to improve the efficiency of the writing task or will support a specific skill in some way. It may also be useful to differentiate learning to write from writing to learn. My assumption is that unless specific skills are used by the learner those skills will not be improved. Hence when AI is simply used to complete an assignment a learner learns little about writing, but may learn something about using AI. 

Writing Process Model

The writing process model (Flower & Hayes, 1981) is widely accepted as a way to describe the various component skills that combine to enable effective writing. This model has been used to guide both writing researchers and the development of instructional tactics. For researchers, the model is often used as a way to identify and evaluate the impact of the individual processes on the quality of the final project. For example, better writers appear to spend more time planning (e.g., Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1987). For educators and instructional designers, understanding the multiple processes that contribute to effective writing and how these processes interact is useful in focusing instruction. 

Here, the writing process model will be used primarily to identify the subskills to be developed as part of learning to write and writing to learn and I will offer my own brief description of this model. It is worth noting that other than composing and rewriting products, other uses of technology to improve writing and increase the frequency of writing experiences seldom receive a lot of attention (Gillespie, Graham, Kiuhara & Hebert, 2014).

The model

The model identifies three general components a) planning, b) translation, and c) reviewing. 

Planning involves subskills that include setting a goal for the project, gathering information related to this goal which we will describe as research, and organizing this information so the product generated will make sense. The goal may be self-determined or the result of an assignment. 

Research may involve remembering what the author knows about a topic or acquiring new information. Research should also include the identification of the characteristics of the audience. What do they already know? How should I explain things so that they will understand? Finally, the process of organization involves establishing a sequence of ideas in memory or externally to represent the intended flow of logic or ideas.

What many of us probably think of as writing is what Flower and Hayes describe as translation. Translation is the process of getting our ideas from the mind to the screen and this externalization process is typically expected to conform to conventions of expression such as spelling and grammar.

Finally, authors read what they have written and make adjustments. This review may occur at the end of a project or at the end of a sentence. In practice, authors may also call on others to offer advice rather than relying on their own review.

One additional aspect of the model that must not be overlooked is the iterative nature of writing. This is depicted in the figure presenting the model by the use of arrows. We may be tempted, even after initial examination of this model, to see writing as a mostly linear process – we think a bit and jot down a few ideas, we use these ideas to craft a draft, and we edit this draft to address grammatical problems. However, the path to a quality finished product is often more circuitous. We do more than make adjustments in spelling and grammar. As we translate our initial ideas, we may discover that we are vague on some points we thought we understood and need to do more research. We may decide that a different organizational scheme makes more sense. This reality interpreted using our tool metaphor would suggest that within a given project we seldom can be certain we have finished the use of a given tool and the opportunity to move back and forth among tools is quite valuable.

Tech tools and writing

Before I get to my focus on AI tools, it might be helpful to note that technology tools used to facilitate writing subprocesses have existed for some time. For example, spelling and grammar checkers, outline and concept mapping, note-taking and note-storage, citation managers, online writing environments allowing collaboration and commenting, and probably many other tools that improve the efficiency and effectiveness of writing and learning to write. Even the use of a computer allows advantages such as storage of digital content in a form that can easily be modified rather than the challenge of making improvements to content stored on paper. The digital alternative to paper changes how we go about the writing process. I have written about technology for maybe 20 years and one of the bextbooks offered the type of analysis I am offering here not about AI tools, but about the advantages of writing on a computer and using various digital tools. 

A tool can substitute for a human process or a tool can supplement or augment a human process. This distinction is important when it comes to writing to learn and learning to write. When the process is what is to be learned, this substitution is likely to be detrimental as it allows a learner to skip needed practice. In contrast, augmentation often allows the opposite as a busy work activity or some incapability is taken care of allowing more important skills to become the focus. 

Here are the types of tools I see as supporting individual writing processes. 

Planning – Organization and Research

Prewriting involves developing a plan for what you want to get down on paper (or screen in this case). A writer goes about these two subprocesses in different ways. You can think or learn about a topic (research) and then organize these ideas in some way to present. Or, you can generate a structure of your ideas (organize) and then research the topics to come up with the specifics to be included in a presentation. Again, these are likely iterative processes no matter which subskill goes first.

One thing AI does very well is to propose an outline if you are able to generate a prompt describing your goals. You could then simply ask the AI service to generate something based on this outline, but this would defeat the entire purpose of learning about the topic by doing the research to translate the outline into a product or developing writing skills by expanding the outline into a narrative yourself.

Since I am writing about how AI might perform some of the subskills identified by the writing process model, I asked ChatGPT to create an outline using the following prompt. 

“Write an outline for ways in which ai can be used in writing. Base this outline on the writing subprocesses of the writing process model and include examples of AI services for the recommended activity for each outline entry.”

The following shows part of the outline ChatGPT generated. I tend to trust ChatGPT when it comes to well established content and I found the outline although a little different from the graphic I provided above to be quite credible and to offer reasonable suggestions. As a guide for writing on the topic I described, it would work well. 

I had read that AI services could generate concept maps which would offer a somewhat different way to identify topics that might be included in a written product. I tried this several times using a variety of prompts with ChatGPT’s DALLE. The service did generate a concept map, but despite making several follow-up requests which ChatGPT acknowledged, I could not get the map to contain intelligible concept labels. Not helpful.

Translation

Tools for improving the translation process have existed in some form for a long time. The newest versions are quite sophisticated in providing feedback beyond basic spelling and grammatical errors. I write in Google docs and make use of the Grammarly extension.

I should note that Grammarly is adding AI features that will generate text. Within the perspective I am taking here I have some concerns about these additions. Since I am suggesting that writing subskills can be replaced or supported, student access to Grammarly could allow writing subskills the educator was intending students to perform themselves to be performed to some degree by the AI. 

If you have not tried Grammarly, the tool identifies different types of modifications the tool proposes different modifications the writer might consider changing (spelling, missing or incorrect punctuation, alternate wording, etc.) and will make these modifications if the writer accepts the suggestion. The different types of recommendations are color-coded (see following image). 

Revision

I am differentiating changes made while translating (editing) from changes made after translating (revision). Minor changes such as spelling and grammar would seem more frequently fixed as edits by this distinction and major modifications made (addition of examples, restructuring of sections, deletion of sections, etc.) while revising. Obviously, this is a simplistic differentiation and both types of changes occur during both stages). 

I don’t know if I can confidently recommend a role for AI for this stage. Pre-AI, one might recommend that a writer share their work with a colleague and ask for suggestions. The AI version of Grammarly seems to be moving toward such capabilities. Already, a writer can ask AI to do things like shorten a document or generate a different version of a document. I might explore such capabilities out of curiosity and perhaps to see how modifications differ from my original creations, but for work that is to be submitted for evaluation of writing skill would that be something an educator would recommend? 

I have also asked an AI tool to provide an outline, identify main ideas or generate a summary of a document I have written just to see what it generates. Does the response to one of these requests surprise me in some way? Sometimes. I might add headings and subheadings to identify a structure I thought was not as obvious as I had thought. 

Conclusion:

My general point in this post was that questions of whether learners can use AI tools when assigned writing tasks should be considered in a more complex way. Rather than the answer being yes or no, I am recommending that learning to write and writing to learn are based on subprocesses and the AI tool question should be considered in response to a consideration of whether the learner was expected to be developing proficiency in executing a subprocess. In addition, it might be important to suggest that learning how to use AI tools could be a secondary goal. 

Subprocess here were identified based on the Writing Process Model and a couple of suggestions were provided to illustrate what I mean by using a tool to drastically reduce the demands of one of the subprocesses. There are plenty of tools out there not discussed and my intention was to use these examples to get you thinking about this way of developing writing skills.

References:

Bereiter, C., & Scardamalia, M. (1987). An attainable version of high literacy: Approaches to teaching higher-order skills in reading and writing. Curriculum inquiry17(1), 9-30.

Flower, L., & Hayes, J. R. (1981). A cognitive process theory of writing. College composition and communication32(4), 365-387.

Gillespie, A., Graham, S., Kiuhara, S., & Hebert, M. (2014). High school teachers use of writing to support students’ learning: A national survey. Reading and Writing27, 1043-1072.

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Obsidian/Smart Connections Workflow

I use Obsidian plus the plugin Smart Connections to inform my blog writing activities. I write for educational practitioners and academics so I try to carefully base my content on sources that I have read and in many cases intend to cite in the content I generate. With this goal, Obsidian represents an archive I have developed over several years to store and organize notes from hundreds of books, journal articles, and websites. I explore my collection in different ways sometimes seeking notes on a specific article I want to emphasize and sometimes exploring to locate what I have read that is relevant to a topic that I might want to include but perhaps do not recall at the time. 

In some cases, I want to use an AI tool to support my writing. I seldom use AI to actually generate the final version of content I post, but I may explore the possible organization of material for something I want to write or I might use an AI tool to generate an example of how I might explain something based on the notes I have made available to the AI tool. 

The combination of Obsidian augmented by the Smart Connections plugin allows me to implement a workflow I have found useful and efficient. I have several specific expectations of this system:

  1. I have already read the source material and taken some notes or generated some highlights now stored in Obsidian. I want to write based on this content.
  2. I may not recall relevant sources I have stored in Obsidian because of the passage of time and the accumulation of a large amount of material. I want the AI system to understand my goals and locate relevant content. 
  3. I want the AI system to identify specific sources from the content I have reviewed rather than the large body used to train the LLM. I want the system to identify the specific source(s) from this material associated with specific suggestions so that I am aware of the source and can cite a source if necessary.
  4. When a specific source has been identified I want to be able to go directly to the original document and the location within that document that is the location for the note or highlight that prompted the inclusion in the AI content so that I can reread the context for that note or highlight.

Obsidian with the Smart Connections plugin does these things and is to some extent unique because all of the material (the original content) is stored locally (actually within iCloud which functions as an external harddrive) allowing the maintenance of functioning links between the output from Smart Connections, the notes/highlights stored in Obsidian, and the original documents (pdfs of journal articles, Kindle books, web pages). 

I do not know for certain that the Obsidian-based approach I describe is the only way to take the approach I take. I am guessing my approach works in part because I am not relying on an online service and online storage. I also use Mem.ai because it allows me to focus on my own content, but linking back to source documents does not work with this service. Mem.ai does include the AI capabilities as part of the subscription fee, but I don’t know when this might be an advantage. The Smart Connections plugin does require the use of an OpenAI API (ChatGPT) and there is a fee for this access.

Example:

Here is an example of what working with the Obsidian/Smart Connections setup is like. I am working on a commentary on the advantages and disadvantages of K12 students having access to AI in learning to write and writing to learn. I propose that writing involves multiple subprocesses and it is important to consider how AI might relate to each of these subprocesses. My basis for the list of subprocesses is based on the classic Flower and Hayes Writing Process Model. I had written a description of the Writing Process Model for a book I wrote and this section of content was stored within Obsidian as well as notes from multiple sources on AI advantages and disadvantages in the development of writing skills. I have not read a combination of the writing process model with ideas about the advantages and disadvantages of AI so this is the basis for what I think is an original contribution.

The following is a screenshot of Obsidian. The Smart Connection appears as a panel on the right side of the display. The left-hand panel provides a hierarchical organization of note titles and the middle panel provides access to an active note or a blank space for writing a new note. 

In the bottom textbox of the Smart Connections panel, I have entered the following prompt:

Using my notes, how might AI capabilities be used to improve writer functioning in the different processes identified by the writing process model. When using information from a specific note in your response, include a link to that note. 

Aside from the focus of the output, two other inclusions are important. First, there is the request to “use my notes”. This addition is recommended to ensure a RAG (retrieval augmented generation) approach. In other words, it asks the AI service use my notes rather than the general knowledge of the AI system as the basis for the output. The second supplemental inclusion is the request to include a link to that note which is intended to do just what it says – add links I can use to to see where ideas in the output came from.

The output from Smart Connections is in markdown. I copied this output into a new blank note and the links included are now active.

I purposefully selected a note that initially was part of a web page for this final display. I had originally used a tool that allowed the annotation of web pages and then the exporting of the annotated and highlighted content as a markdown file I added to Obsidian. This file included the link from the note file back to the online source. As you can see, the link from Obsidian brought up the web page and with the assistance of the activated service added as an extension to my browser displays what I had highlighted within this web page. Interesting and useful.

Conclusion:

We all have unique workflows and use digital tools in different ways because of differences in what we are trying to accomplish. What I describe in this post is an approach I have found useful and I have included related comments on why. I hope you find pieces of this you might apply yourself.

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Writing to Learn Research – Messy

Writing to learn is one of those topics that keeps drawing my attention. I have an interest in what can be done to encourage learning and approach this interest by focusing on external tasks that have the potential to manipulate the internal cognitive (thinking) behavior of learners. My background in taking this perspective is that of an educational psychologist with a cognitive perspective. I have a specific interest in areas such as study behavior trying to understand what an educator or instructional designer can do to promote experiences that will help learners be more successful. The challenge seems obvious – you cannot learn for someone else, but you may be able to create tasks that when added to exposure to sources of information encourage productive “processing” of those experiences. We can ask questions to encourage thinking. We can engage students in discussions that generate thinking through interaction. We can assign tasks that require the use of information. Writing would be an example of such an assigned task. 

Writing to Learn

Writing to learn fits with this position of an external task that would seem to encourage certain internal behaviors. To be clear, external tasks cannot control internal behavior. Only the individual learner can control what they think about and how they think about something, but for learners willing to engage with an external activity that activity may change the likelihood productive mental behaviors are activated.

I found the summary of the cognitive benefits of writing to learn useful and consistent with many of my own way of thinking about other learning strategies – external tasks that encourage productive internal behaviors. Writing based on content to be learned requires that the writer generate a personalized concrete representation at the “point of utterance”. I like this expression. To me, it is a clever way of saying that when you stare at the screen or the empty sheet of paper and must fill the void you can no longer fool yourself – you either generate something or you don’t. You must use what you know and how you interpret the experiences that supposedly have changed what you know to produce an external representation.

To produce an external product, you must think about what you already know in a way that brings existing ideas into consciousness (working memory) by following the connections activated by the writing task and newly acquired information. This forces processing that may not have occurred without the external task. Connections between existing knowledge and new information are not necessarily made just because both exist in storage. Using knowledge to write or to perform other acts of application encourages making connections.

Such attempts at integration may or may not be successful. Having something external to consider offers the secondary benefit of forced metacognition. Does what I wrote really make sense? Do the ideas hang together or do I need to rethink what I have said? Does what I have proposed fit with the life experiences (episodic memory) I have had? 

Writing ends up as a generative process that potentially creates understanding and feeds the product of this understanding back into storage.

Graham, Kiuhara & MacKay, M. (2020)

In carefully evaluating and combining the results of many studies of writing to learn, these researchers intended not only to determine if the impact of writing to learn had the intended general benefit but to use the variability of writing tasks and outcomes from studies to deepen our understanding of how writing to learn encouraged learning. Surely, some activities would be more beneficial than others because of the skills and existing knowledge of learners or the specifics of the assigned writing tasks. So, the meta-analysis is asking if there is a general effect (Is writing to learn effective), and secondarily are there significant moderator variables that may help potential practitioners decide when, with whom, and how to structure writing to learn activities?

The Graham and colleagues’ research focused only on K12 learners. Potential moderator variables included grade level, content area (science, social studies, mathematics), type of writing task (argumentation, informational writing, narrative), and some others. I have a specific interest in argumentation () which is relevant here as a variable differentiating the studies because it requires a deeper level of analysis than say a more basic summary of what has been learned. 

Overall, the meta-analysis demonstrated a general benefit for writing to learn (Effect size = .30). This level of impact is considered on the low end of a moderate effect. Graham and colleagues point out that the various individual studies included in the study generated great variability. A number of the studies demonstrated negative outcomes meaning in those studies the control condition performed better than the group spending time on writing to learn. The authors propose that this variability is informative as it cannot be assumed that any approach with this label will be productive. The variability also suggests that the moderator variables may reveal important insights.

Unfortunately, the moderator variables did not achieve the level of impact necessary to argue for useful insights as to how writing to learn works or who is most likely to be a priority group for this type of activity. Grade level was not significant. The topic area was not significant. The type of writing task was not significant. 

Part of the challenge here is having enough studies focused on a given approach with enough consistency of outcomes to allow statistical certainty in arguing for a clear conclusion. Studies that involved taking a position and supporting that position (e.g., argumentation) produced a much larger effect size, but the statistical method of meta-analysis did not reach the level at which a certain outcome could be claimed. 

One interesting observation from the study caught my attention. While writing to learn is used more frequently in social studies classrooms, the number of research studies associated with each content areas was the smallest for social studies. Think about this. Why? I wonder if the preoccupation of researchers and funding organizations with STEM is responsible. 

More research is needed. I know practitioners and the general public get tired of being told this, but what else can you recommend when confronted with the messiness of much educational research? When you take ideas out of carefully controlled laboratories and try to test them in applied settings the results here are fairly typical. Humans left to their own devices as implementers of procedures and reactors to interventions are all over the place. Certainly, the basic carefully controlled research and the general outcome of meta-analysis focused on writing to learn implementation are encouraging, but as the authors suggest the variability in effectiveness means something, and further exploration is warranted.

Reference

Graham, S., Kiuhara, S. A., & MacKay, M. (2020). The effects of writing on learning in science, social studies, and mathematics: A meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research90(2), 179-226.

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Follow bloggers for a deeper context

I have had at least one blog since 2002. Since that time, I have also had control of the server on which my blog and other content I created was stored. At the beginning of this period of time, I worked at a university and was able to run a server through the university network. This translates as I had a dedicated IP for my site and once someone found my content and bookmarked the site, the site would always be available at that address. I can’t remember the exact address, but it did indicate my server was identified as a part of the more general university network.

When I began to generate free content I intended to supplement the textbook my wife and I had written through what was originally Houghton-Mifflin, I decided it might appear that even though the content I was offering was free to any viewer, it might seem I was using university resources to benefit me financially and so I began renting server space. I have continued to host my content through Bluehost since that time. This company provides services at multiple levels. My blogs make use of WordPress, but I have a general account because I use Bluehost for content other than blogs. 

I spend about $200 a year for the server space and the cost of two domains (learningaloud and curmudgeonspeaks). I include this financial information because part of the issue of how you provide online content has a financial component. Among the financial issues are whether you want to make money and whether you want to minimize personal costs. None of the content on my server is behind a paywall and there are Google ads on some of my content. The income from ad clickthroughs is less than $25 a year. So, I must recognize that my site is a hobby and the inclusion of ads is pretty much a matter of personal curiosity. I follow the analytics my site generates as part of this hobby. The activity level the site generates is sufficient to maintain my interest, but has declined in this last decade. I attribute this decline to moving from having textbooks sold through a textbook company to self-publishing via Amazon. My motives for this transition have been documented in my blog posts and were related to my interest in investigating a different model for textbooks that combined a smaller and less expensive book with online resources. 

I am writing this post partly as an extension of a previous post that considered cross-posting my blog content to Medium and Substack. One way to look at the purpose of this post might be to explore the question of why with the availability of services such as Medium and Substack (and other outlets) would anyone want to continue to pay to host personal content. I am not alone in asking this question. My take is related to, but not equivalent to the concept of COPE (compose once publish everywhere), but focuses on different values and factors. 

I find that a core belief I have about having a location where you store and host your own content has considerable overlap with my beliefs concerning the value of books. I believe book authors and content providers bring a perspective and context to their creative work that is not maintained in pieces of content experienced in isolation. You might argue that this is fine because as a consumer you will build your own understanding based on the elements of information you pick up from multiple authors. I agree you might and probably should do this. However, models of understanding are transferable and can be used to build on and contrast with personal efforts to develop understanding.

Yes, this sounds pretty abstract and vague. Think of what I describe as a model as a way of understanding – how you see things working and what causes what to happen. Ways of understanding (models) can be general and specific and they can be complete or incomplete. Sometimes we have flawed ways of understanding that seem to work in some situations, but we may at some point find our way of understanding does not work in others. We can be convinced we have things figured out when this is really not the case and only when we try our models in actual situations or compare them to the models of others with different and perhaps more experience that we see a bigger picture. 

I have generated thousands of posts over the 20+ years I have been involved in blogging. I am certain some of my posts are naive and wrong and some may be inconsistent. Like a book, the collection does emphasize a limited set of ideas and provides connections among these ideas. These posts are tagged and organized so any interested party can explore related ideas to explore the broader context of my ideas. You just don’t get this with the selection of posts I add to Substack or Medium. 

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Writing the public product

This is the final post in the series describing my own writing process. I will admit that putting the ideas you have collected together for a public product can be very time-consuming, but less dependent on tools/services others have not encountered. I write mostly in Google docs. I write most blog posts in WordPress (the same tool that organizes and presents my posts to the public). I have experimented with other writing environments and for those wanting to try something different I will describe my favorite.

Scrivener

Scrivener is a tool for organizing resources and turning these resources into a final product. You can try the tool at no expense, but I did purchase my copy at the educational rate of $40.

I would describe Scrivener as a tool for larger projects that involve the organization of many resources, exploring what your final product might look like, and working on a product that will take some time to complete. I wrote this series of blog posts using Scrivener (the total of all the posts was a major project) and I wrote one edition of our textbook using this tool. Because of its system for storing and organizing resources, Scrivener could be used to explore the Smart Note writing process before fully investing in the multitool process I have described over the past several posts.

The three panel system shown below works this way. The binder (leftmost panel) provides access to content (background, original written products). The content selected appears in the middle panel (this happens to be the previous post in this series). The right-most panel provides access to metadata associated with the content in the middle panel (tags, notes, etc.).

Scrivener has other tools (views) for working with and organizing ideas. The following is the corkboard which allows the identification of ideas that can then be organized and expanded into text.

Scrivener is expandable and has an active community contributing templates for various types of products (blog posts, screenplays, scientific articles, etc.). Templates establish the organizational structure of the Binder. If you want, the content of a Scrivener project can be composed and output in formats for different purposes. For example, you can output the product you are working on in a format appropriate to upload to Kindle (.mobi). This is a very powerful tool I admit I use to introduce some variety into the time I spend writing. I have learned enough about the product that I can use it from time to time and move content back and forth to other tools without a lot of wasted time.

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Step 1: Identify ideas within original content sources

Little that I write comes originally from my own thoughts. Ideas mostly start with things I have read and occasionally heard. Giving credit when possible is a value I learned early. 

My comments in this series are based on an analysis of my own writing process with an eye toward improvements I might make. This is not a new goal as I have experimented with aspects of this process and how I might support it with technology for years. I have explained the more immediate impetus in a previous post. 

This post concerns the various tools I use to collect and process ideas from various inputs. The goal of what I am working on in my most recent process upgrade is to try to move aspects of writing earlier in this process. My intention is to use the note-taking capabilities of many of the tools that follow more aggressively and to feed these notes forward to the newest stage I will explain in the post that follows. The following material is organized by input source. You may have more of an interest in some of these inputs than others depending on how you contact information in your life,

Listening

I have included listening more based on past experiences than on present practices. I used to take notes during presentations I would attend. Often these presentations would occur at conferences I attended. If you are younger, you may be attending classes and taking notes as part of that type of formal learning environment.

The two tools I list here have an interesting capability I think most could benefit from applying. The tools record audio and link locations in the timeline of this audio to any notes that are taken. The benefit here is that should the notes be vague at later consideration, the original audio can easily be reviewed for clarification. I also suggest that when the note taker realizes that something is slipping past them they simply enter some marker in their notes – “I am confused here”.

Pear Note – http://www.usefulfruit.com/pearnote/

SoundNote – https://soundnote.com/

Journal Articles as PDFs

I am a retired academic so much of what I read and still write about is originally encountered in journal articles. For years now, university libraries offer online access to these journals allowing the download of the pdfs of articles. I used to joke that I would use my computer to download what I wanted to read before I would walk across my office to find the same article in a journal I had on my shelves. I used to use EndNote to read and highlight articles. I had issues synching the annotated content between my textbook computer which is the machine I prefer for writing and my iPad which is the machine I prefer for reading. After some experimentation, I settled on BookEnds and Highlights for these purposes. I use them together as each has advantages. The unique value of Highlights is that highlights and notes are easy to export as a separate document should you want to use this content separate from the original pdf (the image below is from Highlights). I believe these are primarily Apple tools and both require a subscription fee. 

BookEnds – https://www.sonnysoftware.com/

Highlights – https://highlightsapp.net/features/

EndNote – https://endnote.com/

The following is the display when highlighting and annotating in Highlights. The highlighted content and notes generated appear in a separate panel on the right and can be exported. 

Other pdfs

I do read other content as pdfs. My tool for this is Mendeley based in a more organized setting called the Mendeley Desktop. If you are trying to avoid paying for a service that both organizes and allows the annotation of pdfs, this would be my recommendation.

Mendeley Desktop – https://www.mendeley.com/download-reference-manager/macOS

Web Content

Diigo is considered a social bookmarking tool. It is social because stored bookmarks (and contents) can be made available to others. A user can set the default to private and then uncheck a box that would add the annotations/highlights for a given site to make the content public. The bookmark itself stores the web address of the original content, Highlights and annotations are stored as part of the bookmark. Bookmarks can be tagged (see terms within the red box) and these tags can be used to search for other bookmarks within the collection. This is a powerful tool I have used for years mostly when was focused on sharing resources with others. Lately, I have become more serious about the other opportunities (e.g., an outline tool that allows the organization of content from multiple bookmark content as an intermediary stage before writing). I offer access to my public notes in one of the links I provide here. I pay an annual fee for the Pro version of this tool. I could get by with the free version (e.g., I could delete each outline I construct to stay within the number of outlines allowed at the free level), but I am pushing myself to use more of the capabilities of this service.

Diigo – https://www.diigo.com/

My public bookmarks – https://www.diigo.com/profile/markgrabe

Books (digital only)

I don’t think I have purchased more than one or two physical books in the past decade and in most cases, this is because I happened to be attending a book signing. I average purchasing about a book and a half a month in digital form. I use Amazon exclusively and while I understand other similar services are available I stick to one environment as a matter of convenience. 

The Kindle (on one of several devices I use) allows highlighting and note-taking. What some may not realize is that Amazon stores all of your highlights and notes online and there are several ways to access this content. 

Amazon Kindle – https://www.amazon.com/b?node=16571048011

Highlights and notes generated while reading a Kindle book can be exported. This content can be found online – https://read.amazon.com/ – and can be edited further (add a note, delete the highlight) online. Kindle and Diigo have a unique relationship in that those who pay for the Diigo service can send their highlights and notes from Kindle to Diigo with the click of a button (see the blue button – Import to Diigo) in the image that appears below.

One final comment – I think it is important to give some thought to sustainability. Services come and go and the process I am attending to describe in total assumes that value comes over an extended period of time. Some issues to consider. First, are resources stored in a format that is independent of the service using the resources. Pdfs seem to meet this goal. Another format, I will discuss in the next issue is markdown text. This is essentially a text file containing common symbols to trigger things like links and tags (e.g., [[]] and #). If the worst happens and a service goes away, pdfs and markdown files can be opened using several other tools. Second, store in multiple places and backup. I try to use services that generate content I can find on a local machine and also exists with reputable services “in the cloud”. I use DropBox and iCloud for online storage. I trust these services and at worst assume I would have some warning if I would have to find a different online storage service.

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When less is more and when it isn’t

I am interested in the process of writing. Originally, I was interested in my own writing and how I might write more productively and efficiently. Gradually., I became interested in student writing. My first interest was in what I would describe as writing to learn and this focus came about because I was convinced what was called Web 2.0 (I called it the participatory web) provided a practical way for individuals to express themselves for an actual audience. In doing so, it made sense that the process of visible expression required deeper thought and a better understanding of what you wanted to share. An interest in the role of technology in learning to write and in collaborative writing followed. I hope this makes sense. There are multiple components here and I am trying to outline how these components are interconnected and came to be as much for myself as for anyone who reads this description. 

As I have spent time learning about writing and how the process might be conceptualized and developed, my way of thinking about what writing involves has expanded. This expansion has been useful because it allowed me to include a long-time interest in student and personal note-taking in how I came to think about writing. Recently, I have been reading a book entitled “How to take smart notes”. The full title which is much longer explains that the book is really about writing as a broad process that begins in reading/listening, moves to note-taking, and then explains how learning and creativity are involved in the progression to generating a text for others. I have found that the full model offered me a lot to consider and to write about. Eventually, some of the writing will likely appear on this site. For now, just accept my recommendation for this book.

Anyway, the topic of note-taking plays a crucial role in this book and especially a type of note-taking that I would describe as an investment in the future of personal understanding and knowledge building. By investment, I mean that the process described involves the immediate accumulation of interesting ideas and important concepts in what the text describes as a slip box. This was a descriptive term used by the originator of the process outlined in the book to describe a physical box in which short, but well-written statements were saved. These “notes” were then linked to other notes in the box through a notation system. Eventually, an author could use these linked statements to create an informative document. Of course, many of us can immediately imagine how to use technology to apply this system and this is part of the message of the book’s author, but there are some basic ideas that are of greater general value. For example, the “slips” amount to more than the highlights or edge of page annotations created while reading, but rather well-formed and personalized statements created from primary sources. Such brief summarizations or insights are closer to a core product of writing than a physical copy of a snippet of the original.

One of the comments from the book and a great example of the cognitive behavior that is at the core of why the writing process is productive was provided in a “side observation” offered by the author. This observation was that while the author kept offering suggestions for how technology might be a great way to implement the ideas from the original “slip box” process, the author suggested that the process of writing notes by hand might be more beneficial than the digital equivalent. I have been having a kind of “meta” experience as I write about my reading and relating of this idea. The author is writing about how to find productive associations among ideas and I see such an association in what I already knew about the logic of taking notes on paper (I have taken notes by hand in a decade) and why I still advocate for digital processing of the entire process of idea storage to final written products.

The author cites a study (Mueller & Oppenheimer, 2014) in support of his position. I have read this study and have existing notes on the pdf of the article I store in my collection. There were three studies in this article comparing performance (comprehension and application) following exposure to an audio lecture and note-taking. All three studies involved one group that took notes by hand and another that took notes on a computer. There are other multiple studies on this issue and because I have a bias toward the value of technology I look for several things in the methodology of studies arguing for the benefit of taking notes by hand. Is the performance test immediate or delayed? If the test is delayed, are learners allowed to review their notes before taking the exam. In comparison to just listening or reading, note-taking offers two potential benefits – external storage and a task that may involve more productive processing of the input. Taking notes on a computer typically results in more content being recorded as most of us can take notes faster on a computer than by hand. If I am reviewing my class notes weeks later, I want a more detailed account. Mueller and Oppenheimer found greater detail in keyboard note-taking, but in their third study with a delayed exam found a benefit for taking notes by hand. They argue that when faced with the reality that you cannot possibly keep up, handwriting requires you to summarize and record key ideas producing the best long-term value. This ends up being the argument used in advocating handwritten notes for the slip box. Summary and key idea notes are what is valuable in writing. It is kind of a less is more argument

I am still not a believer although I buy the notion that at some point you need to process the original input for personal meaning. The proposal that an approach that is slower (handwriting) and as a consequence encourages deeper processing (also slower) seems to argue for some approach that is must address these two limitations. Both slow and slower strain the limits of working memory. The issue with deeper processing is when this more productive processing should happen – during the presentation (as saved to summary notes) or when studying more complete notes. Here is my criticism of the Mueller study in making the suggestion for practice that appears to be made and is picked up by Ahren’s book. . Allowing a few minutes to review notes before taking an exam is not my idea of studying for an exam. Certainly, if this is all of the time allowed good summaries would be most helpful. However, if I had a day or so and at least the night before to study a large body of lecture notes I would prefer access to notes that are more complete. When doing this, I would prefer more complete notes I could think about (process for meaning and application).

I think there are tools appropriate to the task of taking digital notes and providing a better delayed experience. The two recommendations that follow record the audio of a presentation (this is the input Mueller uses) and allows for the taking of notes. The apps link the notes to locations in the audio. If on reexamining the notes to see if they make sense (hopefully initially close in time to when the notes are taken) something does not make sense. Small portions of the audio can be replayed for additional processing.

Pearnote

Soundnote

Ahrens, S. (2017). How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers

Mueller, P. A., & Oppenheimer, D. M. (2014). The pen is mightier than the keyboard: Advantages of longhand over laptop note taking. Psychological science, 25(6), 1159-1168.

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