Another useful one for the start of the academic year – WikiHow, the collaborative how-to guide that anyone can edit, has an article called How to Take Perfect Lecture Notes. After reading the suggestions for taking notes, then organizing and rewriting the later, I think creating a personal wiki site and bringing a laptop to class might be an optimal way to do this. Imagine taking notes in your wiki, then simply editing those very notes and expanding them into more cohesive pieces of information. The ease-of-use of a wiki would enable you to refine and rewrite not just once, but in an ongoing way as you remember things from the lecture. You might even invite friends to edit your wiki, thus creating a collective repository of notes that you all can access at any time. This brings a whole new meaning to “Can I borrow your notes?”