After discussing research strategies with peers and doing some online ‘vestigating, I recently bought a Livescribe Echo.

Briefly, the Livescribe pen essentially records audio as you are taking notes. As simple as that sounds, what’s most valuable is that it plays back audio tied to exactly what you were writing at the time – instead of listening through an entire lecture or trying to queue up to a moment you remember, you can tap on a jotting, chart, or note and the audio from the moment you were writing will play. It’s intuitive and user friendly and not necessarily affordable for widespread consumption yet. (Here is a useful article that talks about Livescribe and its potential.)

Particularly due to the need to create robust fieldnotes based on in-class instruction for my dissertation, the ability to record and pinpoint audio moments in a classroom that are tied to my own (sloppy) handwritten jottings looks to be a valuable asset.

And while a couple of cursory Google searches yield interesting reading on the role that some are seeing Livescribe as a tool for ethnography, its challenges, and risks of deceit, I have been thinking about its potential as a tool for pedagogical feedback.

Last weekend, as I sat through a panel at the MLA convention, I momentarily spaced out and began absentmindedly doodling on the Livescribe notepad. Later, as I reviewed my notes and queued up the audio for relevant jottings I took during the recording, I glanced at the scribbles I made in the notepad’s margins. Because of the way the device works, I could listen to the exact moment that a speaker lost my interest.

While I can’t afford a class set of Livescribe pens for my students (and I’m not sure if that’s necessarily the best way to invest in technology for my classroom), it would be interesting to give an arbitrary student a Livescribe in class each day. By simply listening to the audio from anytime the student draws, sends a note to a classmate, or begins working on something for another class, teachers can quickly note when their lessons are less effective and they are not communicating in a way that is maintaining interest.

I am now amassing pages that are empirically showing when I become naturally bored in meetings and presentations. I can think more critically about my role as a participant or audience member and could conceivably provide feedback to others based on this. Now it’s time to equip my students with the same possibilities.

[One note about Livescribe: though they are relatively affordable, the paper that Livescribe pens write on is proprietary. You need to purchase specific notepads and printing out your own isn’t the easiest thing to do. It would be nice to be able to buy Livescribe printing paper to make handouts, printout essays and do audio peer-review. I plan to write to the company about this shortly.]