For your first year, stick with physical notes! A computer is bulky, often inefficient for legit note-taking, and a massive temptation to be sidetracked.
Your professors will appreciate your attention, and honestly, you'll absorb the information better than if simply plugged into your Mac.
If you want to clean up your notes using a computer after class, now that's perfectly acceptable and very helpful in my opinion.
I'd agree with this post. Pen and paper (and using your ears and brain, - you'd don't need to take down every syllable, just the key points) would be my suggestion. It is an excellent idea to transfer notes to a computer after class - besides which, it gives you time to refresh the material and focus on what is necessary.
Honestly, I've only found a laptop in class to be a hindrance. You get tempted with facebook and other stuff, while you're forced to focus on the class with pen and paper. It's also easier to format stuff the way you want and not fight with Word or Pages
Worth noting, a few very good points and a post I'm in agreement with.
Never bothered taking notes. Especially in history classes; it's all in the book.
Here, I have to say, utter tosh. History has many books, far more per course than most students are prepared to read or study (or have the time to do); besides, usually, there are not right or wrong answers in history, there are responses that are more or less credible.
I've worked as a history (and earlier, politics, too) lecturer at a number of universities over that past twenty years or so.
The first thing to say to the OP is that history is a subject that requires a lot of reading, a fair bit of thinking, and quite a bit of essay writing.
What is being tested in the essay writing is your understanding - as much as your knowledge - of the topic that was set. Accuracy in facts matters, but so does understanding of background and analysis of causes, courses and consequences.
The big questions asked are usually the standard ones: Who, what, where, when, and, in history, these are usually (but not always) straightforward. Something either happened, or it didn't. The questions that can get tricky, or contentious, and the ones that all of the analytical disputes take place around, are the "how" and "why" questions. Here, a wide knowledge and mastery of the material helps when coming up with an answer.
Lectures usually do not (or ought not) simply discuss what is in the book; more usually, they discuss the topic around what is in the book (or books) - and, (this is where miles01110 misses the point about it "all being in the book"), lecturers often have access to sources students know little or nothing about, or deliberately assign provocative books to read, books which take a strong stance (and where, for reasons of strong bias, everything most certainly was not in the book) in an attempt to make the student argue.
Your task when note taking is not to take down everything the lecturer says; I used to be stunned at how most of my students wrote down everything. Your task is to listen, to have some idea of the material, and to try to see what sort of sense the lecturer is making of this material. That means cultivating listening - and analytical - as much as writing skills. So, pen and paper works best in this context, and it is what I use myself, still, (when attending meetings and seminars) and subsequently, transferring a succinct account of what happened to a computer.
Hope this may be of help.
Cheers
