by Abigail Ramirez
Daily Lobo
UNM student Hung Truong said note-sharing Web sites can make college rewarding.
"It helps the learning process to share your notes with your classmates and collaborate more easily," he said. "I think it makes for a better learning experience."
Truong created the Web site Notecentric.com to help students share their notes online.
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UNM, NMSU, Alabama State and Notre Dame are some of the 100 universities around the nation that belong to the Web site, he said.
A student uses the Web site by logging into their account before class begins.
They write their class notes on the Web site and save them.
Students can add pictures, diagrams and links to Web sites into the notes, he said.
Student Ashley Sanchez said the Web site could help students with difficult topics in class.
"Maybe if you don't understand something yourself, you can look, and maybe their notes will help you understand," she said. "I guess it would help to look at more of a visual aid, and maybe someone else can actually write it out."
Student Aaron Trujillo said he would try the Web site, although it might not help him in class.
"My music appreciation teacher is really boring, so I probably wouldn't show up to class and just get the notes from somebody else," he said.
A student needs to have a university e-mail address to create an account.
Students can add classes to their account by sorting through a list of subjects and course numbers.
"If other people are signed up for the same class, you will be able to see their notes on the Web site," Truong said.
Truong took three months to create the Web site, he said.
It launched on Aug. 27.
He came up with the idea last semester in his computer class, he said.
"I had to take notes on my laptop, and I didn't want to have to worry about having them on my home computer, too," he said. "I just wanted to have a way to have my notes in one place."
Sharing notes in class also led to the creation of this Web site, he said.
"I found that it was just hard to share my notes with my classmates," he said. "Whenever they would ask me to share them, I would get out of class and forget that I had to give it to them."
In two weeks, students will be able to screen who can see their notes, he said.
In the future, he plans to add a message board, spell-checker and a calendar, he said.
James Burbank, an English professor, said the Web site might help students understand class material.
"Maybe it means increased comprehension, which on lecture material and reading material is very low at UNM," he said. "Students don't read, or if they do, they read at a very low level."
However, the Web site might lead to academic dishonesty, he said.
"If they're copying papers or plagiarizing, that's a different matter," he said. "With the Web, students have less and less of an idea of what plagiarism is."
