January 2025 – Learning Aloud

Reader’s Notebook, Commonplace Book, and Note-Taking Systems

Many of my posts describe tools and methods for externalizing and encouraging learning by recording some form of written notes. Recent versions of the approaches and tools have emphasized digital tools and concepts such as Smart Notes and a Second Brain. Note-taking has a long history with a large volume of research focused mainly on the use of notes in academic settings. This setting and this research were a major focus of my professional career. Now, with more time, I have broadened my focus beyond the classroom and the format of notes typically recorded in that setting. Other formats have unique practitioners and approaches that often exist in silos and it seems possible greater awareness of these different traditions offers new opportunities.

I am not going to review past posts here that have emphasized taking digital notes, but propose that such approaches can be compared with two other categories commonplace books and readers’ notebooks (used here as a formal term).

Commonplace books have been around forever and the commonplace books kept by famous creative people are sometimes explored for their historical significance (e.g., Da Vinci ). Commonplace books are often divided by topic and thus are different from a diary which is organized sequentially by date. Commonplace books were often collections of quotes copied from books and organized into topics.

A reader’s notebook is a tool used by readers to track their reading, reflect on texts, and engage more deeply with literature. It is often used in classrooms, book clubs, or personal reading routines. While the specific components of a reader’s notebook can vary depending on its purpose, here are the most common components.

A reading log: books that have been read (title, author, date read) and books to be read. What was the personal rating of the book?
Book summaries and notes: Important quotes, key ideas, themes
Reflections and responses: reactions and potential applications. Would book be recommended?
Characters and plot: Appropriate for works of fiction.
Vocabulary: unfamiliar words with definitions encountered while reading
Questions and predictions: Questions related to the text. What is the author trying to say? How do I think this will end? Am I interpreting this correctly?
Connections: Text-to-self. Text-to-other texts. Text-to-life or world experiences
Visuals: charts, diagrams, drawings copies or created.
Related books: other books by author or related relevant works. Author bio.
Discussion notes: class or book club notes from discussions.
Production goals: are there projects that might follow from the content of the book?

These components could be headings entered in a blank notebook (paper or digital) or could be scaffolded in some way. One common technique used in K12 classrooms making use of Google Classroom is to create and share a Google Slide file with slides prepared as templates for different assigned components. The user (student) can then duplicate slides from the templates as needed to create their Notebook. A cottage industry has sprung up among educators preparing and selling the collections of templates on outlets such as “Teachers Pay Teachers”.

For those interested, here is a tutorial outlining how to set up Readers’ Notebooks, a great example of the type of template collection one could find and purchase, and just so you don’t get the impression this learning tool only applies in K12 a higher ed example.

Readers’ Notebooks and Commonplace Books are both tools for recording and organizing thoughts, ideas, and information, often related to reading or personal reflection. While they share some similarities, they also have distinct purposes and methods of use. Here’s a breakdown of what I think are frequent differences in practice.

Basic Comparison of Reader’s Notebook and Commonplace Book

	Reader’s Notebook	Commonplace Book
Primary Purpose	Engage with and process textbooks and personally selected books	Process and store content from a variety of sources
Learning goals	Primary use is typically focused on assigned texts and improvement of reading skill	Used to collect and synthesize knowledge across interests
Typical context	Most commonly used in educational settings or book clubs	Used by scholars, writers, and thinkers to compile knowledge
Format	Can be freeform, but commonly structured using templates in educational settings	Commonly freeform
Intended duration	In academic setting, duration is the length of a course or to tract reading interests and performance through multiple grades	Intended for long-term accumulation of potentially useful information and thoughts.

The Continuum

I wonder if Readers’ Notebooks, Commonplace Books, and Tools for building long-term notetaking systems might be positioned along a continuum with different goals being emphasized within transitions that all are based on the desire to document learning experiences. Transitions might be applied that include level of formal structure, unit of information and means of connecting, expectations of the modification of source units over time, likelihood content will be shared directly with others, and degree to which approach is intended to feed into external products versus documenting and examining personal experiences.

One of my personal interests has always been whether learners are taught and coached on their efforts to externalize learning experiences. As a college prof interested in the hows and whys of taking notes, I observed that so many students just kind of wrote stuff down without previous formal discussions concerning specific tactics and explanations of why specific tactics were being promoted. I wonder if the template-oriented approach of the Reader’s Notebook with the common practice of sharing with classmates and the teacher might represent a way to develop insights and skills related to taking notes.

Instagram to Pixelfed

Social media users seem to be living in a period of time when many are questioning their long-time commitments to specific big tech platforms. Perhaps they object to the political leanings of owners and the way they have tweaked the algorithms that generate automatic content feeds in objectionable ways. Perhaps they object to privacy issues that target them both for ads and for other content. For many years, they may have held similar concerns, but felt locked in by the network effect – the accumulation of friends and contacts connected to them and each other.

This has been my personal experience. I became a Twitter member in 2006. That was a long time ago in Internet time. I joined TruthSocial much more recently. I left both platforms a few months ago for a variety of reasons. With Twitter, I was upset with the algorithm that seemed to send me (the “For me” option) more and more content I regarded as misinformation and also lowered the chances I would see posts containing links. Links to interesting content were one of the reasons I had previously found Twitter (not X) to be useful. With TruthSocial, I left because the election of 2024 was over and my interest had been countering the misinformation so common on that platform. There seems little point now.

I am having second thoughts because abandoning those platforms to the infidels seems only a way to change the experience for others. I may change my mind and check in once and a while to explore.

I do think we now have options whether we prefer to commit to individual platforms or maintain a meaningful, active presence on several. The power of the network effect has abated and federated services offer flexibility.

Instagram to Pixelfed

This post describes the expansion of the way I use two photo-heavy or photo-first platforms. Many probably consider Instagram the default in this category. I used Instagram originally to share images with friends and family. Friends and family were also users so it was easy to fall into this commitment. My use expanded beyond sharing images and captions and this transition seemed true of many.

I started using Pixelfed in 2019 which was soon after it was first made available. I take a lot of photos and have had the opportunity to take pictures in many locations. Pixelfed became a way to share some of my best with others interested in photography.

Why change and what will be different?

I was prompted to write this post mostly because Pixelfed just released apps for iOS and Android. The version I had used from my laptop or desktop computer was fine for my focus on sharing my best photos which was my perception of the way others used the platform at that time. Many folks use Instagram on their phones in a broader variety of ways moving seamlessly from collecting images to sharing images to friends and family. It is easy and informal. Pixelfed can be used in the same way and I think the phone-based version will greatly expand the way the platform is used.

You might want to explore an alternative to Instagram because of some of the reasons I have already mentioned. There are other implications that might be less obvious. First, there is the privacy issue. Pixelfed does not host ads and has no need to collect user data to target ads. Second, Pixelfed is a federated service. This means there are multiple hosts referred to as instances some of which may have a unique focus. Hosts with identifiable interests allow users to find and associate with users similar to themselves. Still, users are not limited to a specified topic and you experience content on many different topics. It is a difference in topic density that differentiates such sites from Instagram. For example, Mastodon is a different federated, but related service comparable to Twitter (X). I am a member of two Maston instances which have attracted different types of users. Twit.social is run by a technology podcaster and has mostly folks interested in technology. Mastodon.education as the name implies attracts mostly folks interested in educational issues. Pixelfed works in the same way and multiple hosts are available. I joined the original instance (Pixelfed.social). Here is an interesting difference between Instagram and Twitter and Mastodon and Pixelfed. Users of Mastodon instances can follow my image posts on Pixelfed and most posts will appear in their feeds. So, federation allows this interesting mechanism for both focus and cross-interest sharing.

I use the same user identifier on all federated platforms (grabe – grabe@twit.social, grabe@mastodon.education, and grabe@pixelfed.social). This consistency ends up being helpful as searching for grabe within one of the platforms will find me in all of the instances of all type. I will demonstrate this in detail later in this post.

Pixelfed

For those unfamiliar with PixelFed, it looks and operates very much like Instagram. The following image shows the feed using the iOS app. If you look at the bottom of the one post from the feed that is visible, you should see a + within a red box. This is the button used to bring up the template for submitting your own photo and text.

The following is the empty template for generating a post and the second image a post with a photo and text. The red box in the first image identifies the button used to upload photos from your iOS photos collection.

Following other users from their federated accounts

The easiest way (I think) to follow other users is to conduct a search. The search box should be easy to locate. I may be aware of another user already or identify someone through a discovery feed. In this case, I want to follow my Pixelfed account from one of my Mastodon instances. As I explained earlier, I use “grabe” as my name in all of my instances and the second and third image show the response to searching for “grabe” and the use of the options presented to follow the individual and instance that interests me. Select “Follow” and new content will appear in your feed.

Summary

Hopefully, this post explained several reasons someone might want to use federated social media in place of some of the major platforms or to add social media instances to one’s existing online presence. The specific example proposed that Pixelfed is a reasonable and perhaps desirable alternative to Instagram. Pixelfed is easy to join and use. The opportunity to link across instances of different federated categories was demonstrated and offers some unique experiences not available with the platforms wanting to concentrate users and prevent them from straying.

Notetaking in the lab and the wild

Human behavior can be scientifically studied in the laboratory and the wild. This is the case with notetaking and other study behaviors. When politicians use the phrase “the science of learning” it can be misleading to the public because science in laboratory settings and in the wild can seemingly lead to different conclusions and related recommendations. I believe that the controversy of the “science of reading” is related to this issue, but I have greater experience with notetaking and study behavior so I will stick to explaining how this works in this more familiar area.

I have been referencing Daniel Willingham’s work a lot lately, and the following quote offers a good introduction to my point. In commenting on textbook companies building in proven study opportunities within their textbooks as aids to students, Willingham offers the following comment:

… if the readings include learning aids such as chapter outlines, chapter previews and summaries, boldface or italicized terms, or practice test questions, don’t try to use these learning aids as a replacement for reading the text. The funny thing about these features is that there’s very good research evidence that they work. Publishing companies paid to have high-quality research conducted; researchers had people read textbook chapters (with or without the learning aids), and they found that people who used the learning aids understood and remembered more than those who did not.

But the psychologists Regan Gurung and David Daniel pointed out that students “in the wild” will not necessarily use such materials the same way they were used by students in the laboratory. Gurung and Daniel suggested that some students use learning aids not to supplement the reading but to avoid it. They read the summary, look at the boldface terms, and then try to answer the practice test questions to see whether they understand enough to we skip the reading.

Willingham and other researchers (e.g., Gurung) note that educational research conducted under carefully controlled conditions may not predict applied situations. Applied situations often involve interactions as individuals make personal decisions about how learning strategies are applied. They may have different goals, different abilities, or different goals and life situations which cause them to use strategies in ways not intended or maybe not at all. Also tactics intended for the classroom situations may not encourage the development of personal skills that would be most likely used in life situations.

When I was still teaching, I sometimes contrasted attempting to do science with humans in contrast to what are often described as the “hard sciences” by note that the chemicals in a chemical reaction don’t decide if they feel like interacting.

In looking back on my own research which was conducted in applied settings I was continually frustrated by this type of issue. I focused a lot of what I did on trying to create adaptive computer-supported study environments. The idea was that a computer can offer questions related to learning goals and use student accuracy and answer confidence to identify areas of weakness and to provide direct connections to the related textbook material. The idea was to identify heat maps of more difficult material for individual learners, to provide questions related to the areas of difficulty more frequently during a study session, and even to provide access to the question related content on the screen if the student wanted. Built into the online delivery system were ways to record the amount of use, the question performance and awareness of understanding, the use of the online content and the delay following wrong answers. My frustration arose from the findings that the system was really designed to assist less capable students (lower reading ability, poorer metacognitive awareness of strengths and weaknesses) who as it turned out were far less likely to use the system and to use it in ways the research would suggest were helpful (e.g., taking advantage of the feedback following wrong answers and especially wrong answers readers thought they understood). The failed opportunity to use the system to try to recognize the lack of understanding makes a good example of what Willingham, Gurung, and others have described. Even when investing time, these learners answered question after question without taking advantage of the opportunity to process feedback.

Understanding Why Tactics Work

Those situations in which learners invest time, but do so in an inefficient way are what I find most fascinating. Motivation makes a huge difference in learning, but would seem less of an issue with these individuals. Perhaps motivation is reflected in how hard in comparison to how long a learner works. This way of thinking would seem similar to Willingham’s “Outsmart your brain” suggestion that the brain interprets easier as better. It could follow that a possible remedy would be better understanding of how a given tactic works in addition to simply learning how to perform certain tactics. Answering questions is harder than rereading but works better because answering questions requires greater effort in actively engaging memory and thinking. Taking notes is better than highlighting because taking paraphrase notes requires more cognitive thinking. Etc.

I can’t help thinking about the fascination and process-oriented debate those interested in Personal Knowledge Management have with tools and tactics in comparison to most students in formal learning settings. Perhaps this is just an impression on my part, but it seems generally to be the case. If I am correct, I think the difference is in the opportunity self-directed learners have to set personal goals and as a consequence invest time in trying to understand why differences in processes matter. The only alternative I can imagine would involve more direct instruction and how to study instruction is not emphasized or cut when resources are in short supply.

References

Daniel, David B., and Debra A. Poole. “Learning for life: An ecological approach to pedagogical research.” Perspectives on Psychological Science 4, no. 1 (2009): 91-96.

Grabe, M., & Flannery, K. (2009/2010). A preliminary exploration of on-line study question performance and response certitude as predictors of future examination performance. Journal of Educational Technology Systems, 38(4), 457-472.

Grabe, M., Flannery, K., & Christopherson, K. (2008). Voluntary use of online study questions as a function of previous minimal use requirements and learner aptitude. Internet and Higher Education. 11, 145-151.

Grabe, M. & Holfeld, B. (2014). Estimating the degree of failed understanding: a possible role for online technology. Journal of Computer Assisted Instruction. 30, 173-186.

Gurung, Regan A. R., and David B. Daniel. (2005). Evidence-Based Pedagogy: Do Pedagogical Features Enhance Student Learning? (pps. 41–55). In Best Practices for Teaching Introduction to Psychology, Dana S. Dunn and Stephen L. Chew (eds.), Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.