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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.