I very strongly considered writing about cellphones and the problems the created in social relationships. Now, the only thing preventing me from writing about that is how it would most likely come across as very techno-phobic. Especially when I start talking about the fundamental purpose of a cellphone is terrible because the act giving someone your phone number tends to impress upon them that they have some measure of control over your time when they message or call you. So instead of that I am going to write a completely different rant about technology and why you should not use it to take notes.
Quick test before we move on. Grab your laptop, if you are not on it already, and pen and paper. Got it? Great. Open up some sort of text editor on your laptop (I recommend notepad since it is very bare bones), put your hands on the home row, and hammer on the 'j' key as many times you want. Done? Without counting the characters on screen write down how many times you typed the letter j. Now count up the amount of j's on screen. How close are you to the actual amount? Now take the pen and paper and write out the letter j until you feel like stopping. Write down how many times you think you wrote j and then compare to the actual amount. If you are like me the number you wrote down for the amount times you wrote j is a lot closer to the actual amount than the amount you thought you type out was to the actual amount.
Another experiment you can do that takes a bit more time is to take notes by hand for a chapter of a book you are reading and then take notes on another chapter on the computer. Wander off for an hour or so and come back. Which chapter do you remember the best? What were the important parts of the chapter? Did the way you take notes on each medium differ?
For a lot people, the written notes were probably the easiest to remember and provided a better view of the important points of the chapter. The written notes are probably the easiest to remember for a couple reasons.
One, writing usually takes a lot more time then typing does nowadays especially with computers being so prevalent in our daily life. I am a bad typist on a good day I probably hit only 40 words per minute on a good day and more than likely hover around about 20 words per minute on average. Even with my poor typing speed I could still probably type out this blog post faster than I could write it down. Writing and typing are not particularly hard, but writing out a paper seems a lot more difficult than typing it. This is because it takes a lot longer to write out the paper. Things that take a lot time seem difficult not because they are but because it presents the illusion of difficulty. Video games use this trick all the time, modern Zelda games are a good reference for this in particular. Boss has a big glowing weak point to damage it but you cannot hit it whenever you want. You have to wait for it to be vulnerable then you can attack and even though the boss only needs to be damaged a few times it will take a lot of time to defeat it. If you decide to replay the game, you will probably remember pretty clearly how to beat the boss because you spent a lot of time on it originally.
Two, the information is most likely more concise. When writing out notes, you are condensing information to what seems to be the most relevant or important details as well as a more chunked version of the information. Most people employ shortcuts when they write down notes so that they can keep up with the professor or just to speed up the note taking processor. So with becomes w/, and becomes &, etc. Not only are you thinking more about what details are being recorded but also about how you are presenting the data. When it comes to typing up notes as one reads or sits in lecture, most people end up typing the notes word for word as well as more notes in general. There is a lot less analysis done on the information itself in this case because there is a lot more information being absorbed. This leads to less pathways being formed in the brain about the information so it is more likely to stay in one's short term memory instead of moving into the long term memory.
Another reason for why it is easier to remember notes you write rather than typing is due the medium itself. When writing notes there is a lot less to potential for distraction as ostensibly the only thing to distract you while writing is the things happening directly around you which is minimize-able. On the computer, there are a lot more potential things to distract you from what you are working on at that moment. Here is a short list of things I have done while writing this blog post: checked my email, facebook, twitter, reddit, hacker news, facebook again, got message, etc. The list goes on for awhile and this just while I am trying to write the blog itself.
Taking notes on the computer might seem really convenient, and it can be, but for the most part there is a lot of inertia centered around it that make it bad for taking notes. Sure, you can take notes on your computer exactly the same way you would write them down but you would probably still not remember it as well if you were to write it down. In fact, there is study that looks into this [1][2]. Now I am not saying never to take notes on your laptop, but to be more mindful about when you are using your laptops to take notes in class. I personally learn and remember information a lot better and more clearly when I write out my notes on paper rather than typing them up; but I am not everyone and neither are you. So test it out, figure out which works better and think about why it does. If you do experience a big loss in information retention from one medium to another, consider switching mediums as it could improve how much you remember in class by quite a bit.
[1] If you happen to have a subscription, you can find the paper here http://pss.sagepub.com/content/25/6/1159
[2] If not, here is an article about it. http://www.vox.com/2014/6/4/5776804/note-taking-by-hand-versus-laptop
No comments:
Post a Comment