Tingyu Zhang
Dr. Pullman
Composition in the era of AI
1.If you are already keeping a commonplace book or digital equivalent, tell us about it. If not, make a list of the subject headings and subheadings you would use to start keeping a commonplace book. Where would you look for content and how would you gather that content? In other words, what would your commonplace practice be.
How did you take notes a few years ago, before ai？
Before AI, I have always used a notebook to keep notes for over 20 years. Specifically, I have used dozens of paper notebook and Word Documents to jot down or type anything important in daily life, school or workplace.
In terms of the process,I would first write down a lot of headings or subheadings at the top of the page such as Composition in the era of AI, Technical writing, Digital Media production, or Life Wisdom. Then I would write down the contents below. I also used many different colored highlighters to categorize, such as pink, orange, green or yellow. To illustrate, I would usually use pink to show what is the most important, orange to show what I could possibly use later, green to show what is totally new for me and yellow to show what I have questions about which I can ask the professors, colleagues or relevant people later.
When it comes to Word Documents, I often took notes of professors’ lectures with some highlighted or underlined words to illustrate the most significant parts. From time to time, I also used a translation tool in class that had both English and Chinese transcripts to help me understand the key points better.
For the content, I used bullet points or numbers to show information in a systematic way.
2. How do you translate (transfer) into the commonplace book?
How are you doing it now with ai?
As I mentioned earlier, I previously used a paper notebook or used Word Documents to take notes randomly.
However, currently with the AI, I use Goodnotes and Notability to take notes to gather information in class. I tag individual entries with relevant topics, inforamtion types, or sources. Then I also use the highlighted function in the tools.
The difference lies in that I can create certain folders in these apps and insert some pictures of some slides I take in the class presentation. What strikes me is that I can even take notes or highlight some elements in these visual images, which improves my learning efficiency since I don’t need to draw anything by myself and just use the photos I take.
In terms of looking for content, I think the digital note-taking app is easier for the users to make connections between different materials, compared with the paper one. It is because I can use the searching functions and I can store hundreds of different materials just in one device. So I can reduce the anxiety of searching among hundreds of paper. Therefore, I can find some similarities and differences in information. In writing, such connections can lead to inspiration (Pullman).
3. What might you start doing in the bear future?
I might want to try NotebookLM. Notebook LM can take uploaded information and create FAQs, Study Guides, Timelines and Briefing Documents of my reading materials. Best of all, it can also take my uploaded reading materials or notes and create a two-host podcast on the very information I uploaded.
This built-in audio summaries and interactive discussion features can help me digest different reading materials for my literature review, my dissertation or papers in a short period of time.