Using Cornell Notes at Clinics

This weekend was spent at the Minnesota Basketball Coach's Association Clinic. It was a very good clinic with a lot of great speakers such as Don Meyer, Alan Stein,Vance Walberg, Ken Novak (Hopkins HS, MN), Carl Pierson (Politics of Coaching Author), Dave Cresap (Perham HS, MN), and Lynn Frederick (Brookings HS, SD). Actually got to spend two hours with Coach Walberg after the clinic at the social, got a lots of ideas. Great stuff from all of these speakers and I really enjoyed my time. It's always nice to see the coaches from across the state that I've gotten to know over the years, we really have a solid group of high school coaches in Minnesota at all levels.

When listening to Coach Meyer, something he talked about was using Cornell Notes at clinics. Cornell Notes are a style of note taking where you have 2/3 of the page devoted to notes, 1/3 of the page devoted to your thoughts/ideas and the bottom of the page is devoted to your summary of the notes that you got. To the right is a simple example of Cornell notes.

Of course I started to use the technique after he mentioned it. I found it to be very helpful - especially after the clinic was over. It allows me to jot down thoughts that I might forget later. For example, if I find an idea I like I will note that in the column. I will also jot things I don't agree with as well as where/how I will incorporate that into our program. It made the clinic much better because I was engaged in the process. I was constantly thinking of how/when/where I was going to use the information and if it lined up with my philosophy or not. If I had or hadn't done this in the past and if I should be doing it. Below is an example of one page of notes that I took from Coach Meyer. As you can see I now have more of my thoughts and feelings on the page than I would have just taking the notes. Likely, I would have had the thoughts but would have quickly forgotten them.

I would highly encourage you to use Cornell Notes at your next clinic - I guarantee you that you'll get more out of it!