Problem Description

Note taking in education is recognized as a critical component of the learning process [1]. While there have been done much research on note taking support with digital systems, the focus has been on lecture based education. Practice based educations impose other needs for a digital note taking system. This thesis is a continuation on my previus project work, “Supporting Notetaking with Digital Writing System: the case of teacher education” [2]. Through observations and empirical data the students note taking and sharing habits were mapped. A digital note taking system was also tested to find its potential for further customization for the PPE students. The main goal of this thesis is to design a customized digital pen and paper based note taking system for the practice based teacher education. The requirements for this system was based on the previous work, the pedagogical objectives of PPE and deployment scenarios. The system proposed in this thesis extends the systems that was used in autumn 2005, the Logitech io2 system [3], to take advantage of the updated software, which include new and enhanced functionalities. An important new feature is the ioTags, a method to invoke actions on parts of notes on a page. The thesis extensions include a new ioTag action to handle archiving of notes and a specialized paper design. The system was evaluated by experts and users. The valuable feedbacks are presented to inform possible further work with this system.