New Web site allows students to globally network with class notes
Sometimes writing down all those notes professors give can be a challenge. Some students are gifted with the ability to take notes, while others just can’t seem to keep up. A new Web site called Notecentric allows students to share and copy notes through the internet.
Hung Truong, a recent computer science graduate at University of New Mexico, created the website www.notecentric.com during the Summer of 2006, and it was launched on Aug. 26, 2006. The Web site is open to both graduate and undergraduate students.
Until now, 159 students were registered users for the Web site, which is available to 252 universities from all over the world, including the United States, Canada, Japan, and China.
According to an e-mail interview with Truong, the original reason for him to create the site was to synchronize Truong’s notes from his laptop to his desktop computer, and to share his existing notes with his classmates without resorting to e-mail.
“The benefits are that you can store all of your notes in one place and have access to them wherever you have Internet access. You can share notes with your friends and have access to your friends’ notes,” Truong said in an e-mail.
This also allows students who may miss a class to catch up a little.
“If you happen to miss class one day, I guess the drawbacks are that you might not have Internet and might not have access to your notes, though there is an option to save your notes.” Truong said in an e-mail.
Caralyn Ferrier, a studio arts major, has never heard of this Web site before, but she thinks it is a good idea.
“It is good (for) networking, and you can get useful information from different people,” she said. “I definitely would like to know the web site and try it.”
Andrew Han, a junior business major, pointed out one drawback to the site.
“Someone might use the web site to avoid showing up in the class,” Han said.
Assistant computer science professor, Douglas Sicker, said he actually found out about Notecentric about a month ago.
“I think it could be a useful site. It could be an interesting place for students to share notes, share concepts, ” he said.
Sicker also expressed some concern about the website, such as students not showing up to class and simply copying each other’s homework rather than doing their own.
“But if it is a place for students to look at somebody else’s understanding of what teacher or professor had meant, that could be helpful,” Sicker said.
Truong said he does not intend for this site to lead to students “ditching class.”
“Notecentric could be used for ditching class, but that’s not the point of it. If people want to use it for that, they can, but I designed it so that students can help one another out,” Truong said in an e-mail. “Also, students could ditch class just using email, so I don’t really see Notecentric as the root of any problems.”
At present, the biggest challenge for Truong is to let more people know the web site.
“I wanted the site to become popular due to word of mouth, but I need to start somewhere.” he said.
