As technology grows, it affects more of our daily lives. In
the current generation, nearly everyone has a personal phone, a Facebook page,
and an E-mail address. We can’t go through our day without checking to see if
we have any notifications or scrolling through what’s new on Tumblr.
This fixation has been spreading to the classrooms.
With the growing use of PowerPoint and wiki’s by the
professors, students tend to crack open their laptops at the beginning of the
lecture to pull up the same information the teacher is giving them on a smaller
screen conveniently located only a few inches in front of their face. The
thought process is simple: open up a Word document (or the PowerPoint if the
professor provides it online) and take supplementary notes of what is being
said to fill in the gaps. That way, if there is information given in class that
was not provided by the professor, everything is in one place.
Right?
That’s how it should
work. However, ideals never turn out so well in the real
world. Instead, students find themselves with the dilemma of
multitasking. Not the “I’m taking notes and saving
trees with this cool solar-powered laptop” kind of multi-tasking either. It converts
instead to “I wonder what Courtney ate for lunch; I keep refreshing the page
but she hasn’t uploaded it on Instagram yet.” Thus, the problem is born. With
the ever-present need to know what’s trending, the laptop ends up doing more
harm than good. However, the problem does not end there. According to Dan
Rockmore, a journalist for the “New Yorker,” explains that the off-task laptop
use distracted not just the laptop user but also the group of students behind
the laptop user. With the use of social media penetrating the classrooms,
the distracted students become too concerned with their social lives or the
distractions their peers are creating, and therefore their learning
capabilities deteriorate. What’s worse is that the students are not
actively aware of it, causing it to be a continuing problem in the
classrooms. The link provided in the previous sentence leads to a
paper, where a number of researchers explain how to educate the students on the
problem and solutions available.
If, however, the students are able to stay away from their
social media outlets and pay attention to the lecture, note-taken would
presumably ensue. The assumption, then,
is that the note taking would become the apex of learning. Although
technology may be at the height of its day, a study published in “Psychological Science” proves that it may not be the
case when it comes to learning. In the study, the scientists Mueller and
Oppenheimer tested the difference between handwriting and typing in relation to
a person’s ability to retain information.
Out of three experiments performed in the study, writing notes by hand
won out every time. In
the first study they tried a basic handwriting vs. typing notes-- handwriting
won. The second time around they tried a three-tiered test between
handwriting, typewriting verbatim, and Typewriting non-verbatim. Handwriting won again. Finally,
Mueller and Oppenheimer tested a four-pronged study where they compared the
participants memory after taking notes via handwriting vs. typewriting—each with
and without prior studying-- and handwriting
still won. How could that be?
Spoiler alert: it is because how our brains work.
The outcomes of the study reveal what happens in the sensorimotor portion of the brain. “Science
Daily,” an online publication devoted
to research news, explains the following in the fourth paragraph of the “A Lack
of Focus” section:
"The sensorimotor component
forms an integral part of training for beginners, and in special education for
people with learning difficulties. But there is little awareness and
understanding of the importance of handwriting to the learning process, beyond
that of writing itself.”
The article in question goes into depth with an experiment
where adults learned a made-up language either by practicing typing or
handwriting the language. Summarily, if one types out the notes, the
individual is simply moving their fingers in a little dance. The
process is faster, yes, but it is not using as much of the brain as could be
done. When something is hand written, however, the individual must
take care to form each individual symbol. This causes the
sensorimotor portion of the brain to fire up, putting what is being written better
to one’s memory. Why else would pre-schoolers be forced to fill out
so many language composition pages? Hand writing takes more focus and
determination than typewriting-- where a simple click of a button can delete
whatever mistakes made as opposed to furiously scratching out the mistake with
an eraser for the hundredth time. Not only that, but the use of laptops
lead to more word-for-word note taking, which can be harmful in the long
run. Going back to the Psychological Science study, Mueller and
Oppenheimer have something to say with the process. “Verbatim note taking has
shown a shallow cognitive process,” the study explains. “The deeper the note taking, the better
‘encoding benefits’.” This can be seen when you compare their
graphs, labeled ‘figure 3’ and ‘figure 1’ respectively.
In other words, when one has to take notes by hand it is
more likely that the individual will put the words in their own sentences or
phrases in order to keep up to speed. The pen can only write so
quickly, and without the ease of the keystroke the student must put more
thought into what is really necessary to write down. This sort of
thinking sparked the idea of a smartpen,
which, although a good idea, hasn't been brought into the mainstream of
technology used in daily lives. 
In essence, although the laptop is more advanced and popular
among the student population than taking notes with pen and paper, the cons
don’t necessarily outweigh the pros. Yes, students tend to spend more time doing assignments when they are
online, but much of that time is put into distractions such as Facebook. These
distractions, combined with the lower cognitive use of taking notes with
laptops, make the use of such devices unpopular amongst circles of professors.
What if there was a way to combine the best of both worlds? We have, in fact, already touched on this. The
smartpen, though relatively unknown, is in a long line of growing technology.
What I am referring to, of course, is handwriting recognition software. This
has been around since the Newton operating system in 1993. In accordance with
the Wikipedia page on Newton Operating Systems, although the system was not
“perfected” until 1996, it is “considered to be the best in the industry, even 10 years after
it was introduced.” In
fact, I am using handwriting recognition software to create this article right
now. Tablets, like the Surface Pro 3, are being equipped with various options
of “keyboards,” one of which contains a few lines that the user can use a
stylus to write with, instead of tapping on a virtual (or externally attached)
keyboard.
Ergo, what has been considered a “problem” in the classroom
is slowly making a comeback. With handwriting technology becoming ever-present
in portable computers, students can fervently take notes with the double
advantage of having them neatly portrayed on a screen, as well as the advantage
of using the learning portions of the brain while doing it.
