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Friday, November 19, 2010

Livescribe and privacy

I've had a new fancy Livescribe pen for a few weeks now. I love it. I moved into a consultant role this year which equates to even more meetings. Some formal, some impromptu crazy brainstorming sessions where you finish with your head spinning in a million directions. I began the year taking my laptop to each meeting. When I got bored or disengaged or felt pressured for time I worked on other projects (planning, communication, video editing). My boss took notice and started giving me "alternative" tasks to complete during meetings. To "use my powers for good not evil". I started to wonder how many things I was missing? I was spending most of my day absent from what was happening right in front of me. That bothered me.

In comes my new magic pen. Now I can take notes with or without audio recording and they can go directly into my Evernote with all other things I do. Tagged and organized. I'm more present and personal again in meetings. I'm not using my screen as a shield. One problem I ran into is that I still need to be connected to look something up, check a calendar or find a file. So, the iPad or iPhone has to come along. But for me it's no where near as distracting. For me this works. I can review the parts of a meeting where my mind wandered. Sometimes the laptop is still needed, but less often. Sometimes i still choose the laptop if i know its going to be really boring :) I just wish the notes imported into Evernote with the audio right in them. I'm having trouble getting the audio in at all. Any solutions?

Two things I've learned:

1. Be VERY aware of the conversation, let others know that you are recording and turn it off if the conversation slips out of the professional zone.
2. I need to write neater and stop doodling to make the writing to text feature more effective.

I can imagine many good uses for this in a secondary math class in group work and creating electronic BANSHOs. For me in my current role I'm loving how it allows me to remain a little more present. I just need to remain aware of privacy and work on my handwriting. I'm having flashbacks to elementary school where I was given remedial work for my handwriting and enrichment in math. My brain worked differently even back then. I wonder how a livescribe pen could have helped?

So... How do you feel about being recorded at meetings?

4 comments:

  1. Hi Jac,

    Thanks for sharing what you've been doing with the Livescribe. We've got quite a few teachers trying it out this year with kids, especially in thinking about special needs, although I know it wasn't designed for that specifically.

    I agree about mentioning the recording issue. I guess most of us carry several devices now that could do the same kind of audio recording, so people shouldn't be shocked if it happens, but good to be proactive!

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  2. Hi Brenda - are any of your teachers using it secondary? I've seen great uses on Zoe and teams blog for elementary (Livewithlivescribe.edublogs.org).

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  3. On a slightly different note. The board of trustees has a motion pending to go paperless. Can you offer us any advice on this? I think they are talking about OneNote. Our agendas and reports are, as I'm sure you know - Adobe Acrobat. Any advice? :)

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  4. Hi Robert - I'll look into OneNote (don't know much about it) and do some research into options and let you know my thoughts early next week. :)

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