Many students in today’s society prefer to use laptops for note-taking rather than writing it down the old fashioned way. Laptops may sound easier to type your notes faster, but it can become a distraction towards learning. Students who use laptops take verbatim notes, meaning they copy notes without giving it too much thought. Students who take longhand notes process the material better than those who type their notes because they must be selective towards what they write. Longhand notes are called generative note-taking. Generative note-taking is summarizing, paraphrasing, and concept mapping a text. Students who use laptops take nongenerative notes, which involves verbatim notes. There are two hypotheses towards why note-taking is beneficial
People claim that new developments have caused kids to be so dependent on their devices, that they can't think for themselves. This claim can also be turned around by saying that technology has given kids more opportunities and chances to learn, and in particular, more opportunities to write (Source 7, Clive Thompson). An example of this is a study done at Stanford University, where it was discovered that Stanford students did a stunning 38 percent of their writing outside of the classroom (Source 7, Clive Thompson). With the developments of E-mail, texting, and social media such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, younger people are constantly writing in their every day lives. In the past, people would, for the most part, stop writing once the finishes their education. Now however, people are more comfortable, and more used to, writing. And while the argument that technology has decreased level of the vocabulary and vernacular of young people is true in some cases, the increase in writing shown by young people has led to a greater ability to convey information to other people, and a greater comfort in talking to people they don't know (Source 7, Clive Thompson). As Andrea Lunsford says, "I think we're in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven't seen since Greek Civilization" (Source 7, Clive
When writing a paper or take notes it's better to use a computer or laptop because it
The research article “The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard: Advantages of Longhand Over Laptop Note Taking” was written by Pam A. Muller and Daniel M. Oppenheimer, and published by the Psychological Science in 2014. The article focuses on a series of previous research on the topic and studies with the goal of providing evidence to answer their two main questions. The first question is which one the two note taking strategies works better and increases academic performance longhand note taking or laptop note taking. The second question is how verbatim overlap (word for word) affects our learning. In the article, three studies were conducted similarly but as the studies were made something new was added to explore new aspects of learning.
Nicholas Carr in the essay “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” states “I can feel it, too. Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going--- so far as I can tell--- but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think.” This quote shows us how people are being affected by spending too much time using new technologies such as texting. Texting really does impact the way people think. While students are in school, they tend to write some of their paper in text form. This is because they are so used to using their phones and using the short texting forms that they forget how to actually write. I had this happen to me before. For example, in one of my English classes I had to write a quick one page essay on a book we were assigned to read. I started to write and once I finished I felt like it was pretty good. So, when I went back to proof read it, I realized that half of my paper was in short text form. I could not believe that I had done that. After I corrected all of my mistakes I turned in my paper. I was so glad that I looked over my essay before turning it in. Also, students would rather be on their phones than learning in school. While I am sitting in class, I always see people looking at their phones and not paying attention. Texting in class could cause you to fail and you would have to take the class over
According to Jame Doubek, in the article “Attention, Students: Put Your Laptops Away”, writing notes by hand is much more effective than typing notes in class.He used an example of Mueller and Oppenheimer’s study that published in Psychological Science to demonstrate that writing notes by hand can be more potent than typing on the computer.First, Mueller and Oppenheimer suggest that with the development of technology, students are relying more on the laptop because laptops are small and and typing notes is much faster than writing by hand, so students love to type notes in class and always “try to transcribe all thing they heard”. However, the more words they copied verbatim, the worse
Although technology is denying us the privilege of upper cognitive analysis, our minds still know the acceptable times to use and not use formal writing. In the article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” Nicholas Carr examines the human dependency to the Internet while in “Does Texting Affect Writing,” Michaela Cullington studies the possible effects of “textspeak” and its connection to current writing skills. “Textspeak” is the language of texting that has considerable amounts of grammatical error. The individual organic computer in the human skull known as a brain has been slowly changing its organic makeup. The brain has begun to change its primal neural pathways (thoughts), which has had a negative impact on memorization, concentration, and addiction; the only scientific correlation between this alteration and time is the human population and its advancements in technology.
The article “The Writings on the Screen” by Tiffany O’Callaghan talks about how this generation reads more frequently, and the style of writing has changed immensely. Tiffany also talks about how taking notes by hand rather than a computer will help you understand the topics of the lecture, and also help you retain the information. She emphasizes on the fact that using a laptop for an educational purpose is problematic, and distracting, not only to yourself, but to others around you. This article also talks about how writing by hand forces your brain to process the information you heard.
I think Birkerts is right when he says education has changed. In school teachers are showing power points and slideshows to their students, which is very hard to write down notes. The advantages of having slides are the students can listen to their teacher instead of writing down notes which saves
In the article Attention, Students: Put Your Laptops Away by NPR gives the evidence that taking notes by hand helps you retain the information better than transcribing them on a computer. The went on to present the findings of a study by Mueller and Oppenheimer, two college professors. The professors write “ This is suggestive evidence that longhand notes may have a superior external storage as well as superior encoding functions” (NPR, 2). This clearly suggests that their findings lead to the conclusion that longhand notes are more successful. In cessation, NPR showcases the undeniable fact that handwritten notes receive a more preferable outcome for students.
However, many of these arguments are opinionated and don’t have any solid concrete evidence. Although, many teachers may say that they can vouch against that because many teachers claim to notice a drop in the quality of student paper since the rise of technology. Michaela Cullington would beg to differ, in her essay “Does Texting Affect Writing?” Cullington claims that a form of digital technology used for communicating known as texting helps “foster the ability to summarize and express oneself concisely” and that “it allows more time to formulate their thoughts and express them carefully”(Cullington 364). As you can see, technology actually helps build summarization skills which are an essential and vital part of writing.
Throughout school, students are taught to handwrite notes. In college, many students transition from handwritten notes to electronic notes, such as on tablets and laptops. In the article “Attention Students: Put Your Laptops Away”, National Public Radio, or NPR, explains that although many students prefer taking notes on their electronics, handwritten notes have been proven to be much more effective despite technology.
Through technology we are introduce to various gadgets that assists us in many different areas of our lives. Such as smart TVs, smart phones, laptops, tablets, computers and many more. In recent discussion of writing, a controversy issue has been whether texting affects our formal writing. In Michaella Cullington article “Does Texting Affect Writing,” Cullington contested that constant texting interfering with students’ formal writing skills. To clarify her claims, a seventh and ninth grade teacher said (They say, I Say. Pg. 363) “she as to spend extra time in class editing papers and must “explicitly” remind her students that it is not acceptable to use slang and abbreviations in writing.” In this case, her students are abbreviating their words instead of writing formal. Despite the anecdotal, sadly I found myself forgetting how to spell certain words. Because of auto-corrections and suggestions my smart phones give, I no longer need to break words up in syllables to spell them. If I start typing and make a mistake a list of suggestions appears, all I need to do is select the correct one. No brainstorm as simple as that. In fact, our brains are like a muscle and in order for it to grow strong and us being wise we have to use it, if we don’t used it, it will
First of all, the article states that " Even when studens in the experiment were given a week to study thier notes, thoes who took notes on a laptop preformed worse on a test than students who wrote thier notes by hand." That right there shows that writing is important and will be benifical to the brains learning process. This article also states that, "Typing and printing by hand require individual rather than connected movements like cursive requires. Neither typing nor printing involve communication better both sides of the brain." What I gather from this quote is that it pushes the brain to become strong in thinking by using
The author’s mood throughout the entire article was pushing toward handwritten notes. In the selection the author states, “ The students who were taking longhand notes in our studies were forced to be more selective- because you can’t write as fast as you can type “ this means that the students who took handheld notes are forced to think more critically about the points written down. This note-taking strategy requires a student to focus more
(Bui in Aragon-Mendizabal 2016) This is because cognitive processing is shallower when using a keyboard. (Mueller and Oppenheimer 2014) Most typists tend to take notes verbatim, (Kiewra in Holz 2016) leading to very superficial levels of actual understanding. (Aragon- Mendizabal 2016) On the contrary, higher order thinking such as attention and memory are required when people take hand written notes. (Aragon- Mendizabal 2016) When taking notes longhand, writers must summarize, paraphrase, and relate concepts to one another in order to record the information in a timely enough manner. (University Wire 2016) Also, proofreading abilities are reduced on typed work, possibly due to the over usage of tools such as grammar and spelling check. (Lessien 2013) Success for students who hand write is documented not only for college students, but for young learners as well.