Webcam to rec College Lectures?

i'm looking for a reasonably priced webcam to attach to my laptop and record college lectures for when I'm sitting in class (or not). Probably will be sitting halfway in a medium sized lecture room....any suggestions? Anybody else do this ?

 

Pretty good idea. I know some teachers forbid that though, and if you get caught may have some kind of action taken against you. I'm not really sure why...

 

It seems to me that the video isn't too important unless there is lots of pictures drawn on the board, or some sort of acting lecture, something of the sort. If the resolution is critical to get as much information as possible (like recording everything that is written on a board), you aren't going to get far. As a student, I say just take the notes the first time.

 

I'd say get a tape recorder. Some teachers will even podcast their lectures nowadays.

 

Take notes. Why the hell would you want to watch an entire movie of a presumably boring ass lecture just to review? You'll have to pick through a ton of bull to get the juicy information you could have just written down in your notebook in the first place. Doh. I don't get it. I think that the people that tape record lectures instead of taking notes just never really learned HOW to take notes.

 

I have had instructors that wouldn't even let you use a sound recorder unless you had a documented hearing problem.

 

Some schools have it as a matter of policy that no material can be recorded unless you have specific permission to do so (usually to compensate for a disability of some sort). I know the University of Toronto does this, and I bet most others do as well.

 

It's because the material is intellectual property and the school wants to control its distribution. Altho, if available for your course, just go to MIT open courseware and get lectures from there.

 

Well you guys didn't really answer his question, but are giving him great advice though. I really don't know about any webcams and stuff, but what these guys are saying is good. Take down the important notes instead of listening/watching the same stuff over again.

 

no webcam I don't think will do that, webcams dont' have that kind of quality.

But I agree wiht the others.

I wonder how many people who record stuff actually go back and listen to it?

Becaues I do see people using recording stuff, and writing good notes is WAY less time consuimng.

 

if anything, just use your laptop to take notes...you'll be able to take down a lot of stuff faster (and cleaner ) than if you wrote it..but there's no harm in choosing the traditional paper/pen method...

At CSU, Sacramento, they let us use tape recorders, though I've only seen one person actually use that in my 3 years here. Also, just as an FYI, Microsoft OneNote has a thing where you can record something and it's icon appears right on your notes after you're done recording. Haven't used that feature myself, as my semester has just started, but, to me, seems like a worthy ally to have.

 

I have a laptop, and while in some classes laptop note taking is realisitic, in some it is not.

In alot of engineering classes and such you have to draw tons of frams, and free body diagrams, and stuff, in a case like that having a laptop wouldn't be very good at all.

In something like psycology a notebook (computer) would work out well.

 

I attempted to take all notes on my laptop last year except for my math courses, and let me tell you, it's hard sometimes. I took a few psych courses, and in bio-psych it was quite impractical because the professor drew a lot of diagrams and tables by hand. As Abyss said, it would be even worse in an engineering class. It worked grand in my programming classes and the other 2 psych courses.

 

If you really need to record those courses get a camcorder (even that one wont help in bad lightning conditions), a web camera.. is useless as video recorder cause most of the times there is not enough light for it, so u will be using only the audio

 

oh yea, classes like math/engineering/science classes, it'll be really difficult to take notes with a laptop due to lots of drawing and whatnot...but for me, in my bio class, i'll be taking the notes down on my laptop and just make little sides notes of drawings that can be found in the books..