Taking Notes on PDAs with Shared Text Input

Abstract

This paper presents a system designed to support note taking on a wirelessly connected PDA in a classroom. The system leverages the devices’ wireless connectivity to allow students to share their notes in real time, allowing individuals to quickly reuse words from their fellow note takers. In addition, presentation material such as Powerpoint slides are also extracted when presented by the teacher, giving students further means to reusing words. We describe the system and report on the findings of an initial user study where the system has been used for four months during a graduate level course on wireless mobile computing with 20 students.