Note-taking
has recently become a topic of intellectual interest. Experiments have been
conducted and conferences have been held to determine how modern technology has
changed the face of note-taking and how this is affecting one’s ability to
effectively take in and regurgitate information. The benefits of traditional
longhand note-taking versus laptop note-taking have been widely discussed, but
an alternative medium could be the answer to making hand-written notes digital
for purposes of sustainability and shareability, with some scholars even
wanting to explore the option of public notes.
Taking
notes is an important mode of learning. Each individual person has their own
methodology for note-taking in a manner that best facilitates their learning
style. Ann Blair, a professor of history at Harvard is quoted in “Note-Taking’s Past,
Deciphered Today” asking, “What is reading, after all? Even if you look
introspectively, it’s hard to really know what you’re taking away at any given
time. But notes give us hope of getting close to an intellectual process”
(Schuessler). This stresses the importance of note-taking and why we should be
working toward discovering the most effective note-taking mediums.
Scholars
at a conference discussed in Schuessler’s article called “Take Note” discussed
the benefits of digital note-taking because it gives the ability to put notes
in a more lasting form than paper and allows for easier sharing. David
Weinberger, a Harvard technologist who attended the conference, is quoted in
Schuessler’s article as saying, “Private note-taking seems selfish to me. Make
it all public, using standards. Big clouds of notes!” (Schuessler).
The
results of making notes public could provide students and scholars with a place
to add and take away knowledge, creating one cohesive intellectual process for
note-taking allowing everyone to gain information in the most beneficial
manner. If notes were regulated and standardized in a public place, students
might pay more attention and be more cautious of what they decide to write or
type down.
While
taking notes on a laptop allows for a student to record more information at a
quicker pace, professors express concerns over the distractions that laptops
offer. In the article “The Pen Is Mightier
Than the Keyboard” Mueller and Oppenheimer state, “Empirical research tends to
support the professors’ view, finding that students using laptops are not on
task during lectures, show decreased academic performance, and are actually
less satisfied with their education than their peers who do not use laptops in
class” (Mueller/Oppenheimer 1).
Due
to widespread technology use in classrooms, laptop note-taking allows students
to record information quickly enough that their notes are verbatim to the
lectures they are hearing. Mueller and Oppenheimer conducted three experiments,
all of which ended with similar results. Those taking longhand notes recorded
far fewer words than those using laptops and the lack of verbatim notes when using
longhand resulted in superior performance in each experiment. Even when
instructed not to take verbatim notes in the second experiment, it was
completely ineffective in reducing verbatim content, once again leading to
results proving superior academic performance after longhand note-taking.
Mueller and Oppenheimer take these results into consideration, concluding, “For
that reason, laptop use in classrooms should be viewed with a healthy dose of
caution; despite their growing popularity, laptops may be doing more harm in
classrooms than good” (Mueller/Oppenheimer 8).
An
attendee of the conference “Take Note” in Schuessler’s article, Peter Burke addresses
the comparison of enthusiastic note-takers to “compulsive hoarders” saying,
“But I distrusted the students who took lots of notes as much as the students
who didn't take any” (Schuessler). This is a similar concern for professors who
are beginning to ban the use of laptops in their classrooms due to the
decreasing academic performance that results from verbatim note-taking on
laptops.
While
there is adequate defense for both longhand and laptop note-taking, neither of
these articles sought a medium that would encompass the benefits of both. New
technologies that combine these two mediums, especially if this technology
incorporates notes going into a public cloud, could give students the solution
to forming an intellectual process for the way in which they record notes,
eliminating issues of detrimental note-taking.
Several
smartpens have been created in recent years, which operate using wi-fi,
allowing students to hand-write notes that are directly uploaded to a digital
format. These pens can also simultaneously record audio so that students can go
back and listen to lectures again and record any additional information they
may not have had time to write down. In her article “Hands-On With Livescribe’s
Sky Wi-Fi Smartpen,” Christina Bonnington discusses her personal experience using
the smartpen and how the convenient technology allows for making hand-written
notes digital.
Technologies
like the Sky Smartpen are still new mediums for note-taking and their affect on
academic performance has yet to be fully tested. However, smartpens do provide
a medium that allows for taking longhand notes that can be converted to a
digital format, eliminating issues of laptop note-taking like verbatim content.
If the wi-fi capabilities of these kinds of technology also enable notes to go
into a public cloud, notes could become sustainable and shareable, providing
students and scholars with regulated and cohesive notes.
Bonnington, Christina. “Hands-On With Livescribe’s Sky Wi-Fi Smartpen.” Wired.com. 29
October 2012. Web.
Mueller, Pam A. and Daniel M. Oppenheimer. “The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard:
Advantages of Longhand Over Laptop Note Taking.” Psychological Science. 23 April
2014. Web.
Schuessler, Jennifer. “Note-Taking’s Past, Deciphered Today.” International New York Times. 6
November 2012. Web.
No comments:
Post a Comment