I have read many teachers who have made it successful and others who absolutely did not find it valuable. I am in between; I absolutely think that students having a notebook and learning to keep track of their learning in an "old-school" manner is useful.
They physically can flip through it, and revise their work, add/refer to it informally during conversation tasks, as opposed to getting distracted and staring at their computer screen instead of looking into their partner's eyes. Plus, most of the middle school students really enjoyed the aspect of colouring/decorating their notebooks, and taking ownership of their work.
It ended up a flop for me, perhaps because of the way I implemented it. I introduced too many rules too quickly, and students were confused exactly what they needed to do. They couldn't quite grasp what it was for, and how to "process" information. I think it was more efficient in a language classroom to process information through social pair activities, than individual work.
I also think having a prescribed way of setting up a notebook was difficult, and ensuring students maintained their books/caught up with work, because there is literally NO TIME to follow up regularly, or to give them those moments to just cut and paste some things. It was much easier to update information online via SEQTA, than sometimes individually flip through their books to ensure they were on the right track.
I'm still thinking this is still valuable for students, so I can see what their writing looks like before it's edited in Word format, but what's an efficient way to use it, and balance this between the use of technology?