Tweeting as note taking

There are many ways to note take. One way I have been exploring my digital note taking is through Twitter. I have to compose my thoughts in 140 characters and this naturally lends itself to breaking down key areas, content, ideas, or links I want to capture.

I’ve been participating in a large round table that we have called #warshipbootcamp. As a collection of educators, museum curators, directors, learning consultants, and learners we have been exploring how we can develop innovative curriculum and learning experiences for teacher and student audiences visiting a new exhibition and participatory site for the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydeny. Instead of moving between printed paper sheets of agendas and support materials, my notebook and my mobile devices to capture thoughts I moved to Twitter to capture all.

Here’s a sample of my note taking:

Screen Shot 2014-08-28 at 2.51.16 pm

Screen Shot 2014-08-28 at 2.51.35 pm

Key to this note taking strategy working is:

  1. A hashtag (to track the notes plus others on the team).
  2. Listen and tweet at the same time. Key for the fast pace is using a laptop as it is easier to capture your thinking this way than on a phone.
  3. Short and sharp notes are best.
  4. Search for links online at the same time, tweet, and come back to the new information later as you can feel comfortable that the information has been captured.
  5. Photos of content are great to assist in tracking the lived experience. This is when I do swap to my phone as much easier to “click and tweet” than the laptop.


How do you note take?

How have you utilised Twitter in this way?


2 Comments Add yours

  1. Jonathan O'Donnell says:

    I’ve tried a bunch of things, including my magic pen, which digitised my notes as I wrote them, and then synced (synk) with my computer.

    For public talks, I’m a big fan of notetaking by tweets. For each speaker, I copy the following information:
    @speakername #EventHashtag http://event-link.if.necessary
    Then, I can quickly open a tweet, paste this in and type my tweet after the colon. It saves typing all the metadata each time.

    If I was really efficient, I’d go back and storify the tweets, but I never do that. Then again, I never look back at the notes I write in notebooks, either. Taking notes is about helping me concentrate and constructing my own understanding of the topic. It sticks or it doesn’t.

    I am jealous of people like Gary Barber, who sketchnote:
    Here is his post about reviewing sketchnotes:

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