Voice recorders . . . good idea or not??

[Future_Doc]

It was my birthday yesterday (30th ). Since I am starting medschool this fall, my wife "bought" me an mp3 player/recorder that I wanted. She actually hasn't bought it yet, she gave me a printout of it from a website. She wanted to make sure it's the one I want. I thought it would be good to have one that doubles as a voice recorder for school. Is this a good idea? Will I get the use out of recorded lectures that I think I will? Are most professors ok with recording them? Thanks!

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[Hendooneh]

Does your school have a note service? Is the note sercive any good? How big is your class? (my class is big enough that if they didn't use the microphone you wouldn't hear anything on a recorder) If I were you I would wait and see what the classes are like first.

 

[BlackPuma]

•••quote:•••Originally posted by Hendooneh:
•Does your school have a note service? Is the note sercive any good? How big is your class? (my class is big enough that if they didn't use the microphone you wouldn't hear anything on a recorder) If I were you I would wait and see what the classes are like first.•••••HAHAHAHA <img border="0" alt="[Laughy]" title="" src="graemlins/laughy.gif" /> ur name is sooo funny....

are u persian?

 

[dknykid1980]

hey there.

hey i have a voice recorder for sale. for details look at the SALE and ADVERTISEMENTS sections on SDN. Or email me at [email protected]

 

[guardian]

•••quote:•••Originally posted by Future_Doc:
•It was my birthday yesterday (30th ). Since I am starting medschool this fall, my wife "bought" me an mp3 player/recorder that I wanted. She actually hasn't bought it yet, she gave me a printout of it from a website. She wanted to make sure it's the one I want. I thought it would be good to have one that doubles as a voice recorder for school. Is this a good idea? Will I get the use out of recorded lectures that I think I will? Are most professors ok with recording them? Thanks!•••••They are helpful if the notes are crappy but the lecturer is good (can't stress that enough :wink: ) or if it's a lecture that you're completely lost on. You may not even need it, I didn't know of any lecture recording services prior to school. Either our course directors or student volunteers have supervised lecture recordings, so you may want to find out.

Also, the details in lectures that are often left out in the notes are usually not that important. So listening to recorded lectures is good for having a sense of the big picture, but notes would suffice in what you will have to know or be tested on. It's my experience that professors like to ramble.

 

[Hendooneh]

•••quote:•••Originally posted by WatchaMaCallit:
• •••quote:•••Originally posted by Hendooneh:
•Does your school have a note service? Is the note sercive any good? How big is your class? (my class is big enough that if they didn't use the microphone you wouldn't hear anything on a recorder) If I were you I would wait and see what the classes are like first.•••••HAHAHAHA <img border="0" alt="[Laughy]" title="" src="graemlins/laughy.gif" /> ur name is sooo funny....

are u persian? •••••vat makes you ting dat?

 

[leorl]

They're pretty good, but voice recorders tend to break easily, especially the microcassette ones. I don't know how well mp3 recorders work, i know MD (minidisc) recorders work really well. but at my university, tons of people use them for undergrad even, so they are definitely good to have. I always used it for lectures that I had a tendency to fall asleep in, as I am the queen of narcolepsy. They're also good for really fast-paced classes where it's hard to keep up, or where material goes so fast that you're concentrating more on writing notes down than listening and understanding it.

 

[Weil-Felix]

I tried recording the lectures my first year, and I quickly stopped doing it for several reasons:

1)It was too much of a time commitment to attend lecture AND listen to the lecture over again on tape. Think about it..are you going to want to sit through several hours of lecture during the day, and then go home and listen to them all over again?

2) If the instructor spoke softly, it was hard to hear on the tape.

3) We already had noteservice that was fairly sufficient for my purposes.

4) I got made fun of HARDCORE because I was the only one in my class who tried to tape the lectures. Yeah, yeah. I know I shouldn't care what people think of me, but it got kind of annoying when I started being known as "the tape girl".

 

[Dodge This]

No one records lectures here, but on the other hand instructors are required to provide a handout for each lecture.

Like someone else wrote, it's too much time commitment even if you do it. This isn't meant to sound harsh, but just learn learn to take better notes...

As for profs having problems with it, I don't know how they feel about it in med school. I know at my undergrad some humanities profs would get into a hissy fit because they considered their lectures copyrighted material. I never saw it happen with a science lecturer, though.

 

[jlw2004]

Chiming in a little late here, but if you have any type of major commute to school, have the lectures recorded is a god-send. We have a note taking service that provides a word for word transcript of the lecture, so I would dub their tapes to listen to on my hour ride to and from school. That way travel time wasn't a total waste.

 

[ckent]

Our school records our lectures for us and provides them on tape or over the computer. I would suggest that you wait until you start school before you decide what you need for school.

 

[barb]

I was wondering the same thing because it was recently my birthday (27th) and my family wanted to know what to get me, and I was considering the voice recorder. But I wanted to first get a general idea how most people take notes in med school so I posted this poll. Here's the link (I hope this cut and paste thing works):
<a href="http://forums.studentdoctor.net/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=002698" target="_blank">http://forums.studentdoctor.net/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=002698</a>