Technolandy

Day 86 (of 2024/25) get the popcorn – notes: writing vs typing part XVIII

Writing notes instead of typing pits scholars against each other — The Hechinger Report

Love this debate (mainly because of what I’ve looked into via neuroscience, while my bias is typing (based on my own ancient university experience) I actually think that it is more of: it depends… and I might even default to the third option having a bigger role: drawing – and will even give a shoutout to some brains that would prefer to re-listen to a session/lecture/reading for it to stick with them as well… 

So I’m glad this article also reaffirms that it is not as easy an argument as it once “was” (or as I point out – felt like it was, but a lot of ‘ought tos’ in education are like communism – great on paper, not quite as good in practice) 

But of course for many, the bias is toward what they are/were used to – still a majority grew up writing/printing words and see typing as an interloper – and with a ban on personal devices, this idiom is being reinforced, while some of us found solace in typing as our font was just as neat and readable as anybody else’s. 

And a rebuttal noted what I often point out (as a bias point) “Drawing conclusions on learning processes in children in a classroom from a lab study carried out on a group of university students that did not include any type of learning seems slippery at best,” and yes, I am aware of my own bias – and applaud students who let me know they like to print/cursive. 

But again my bias is because while I like typing, over the years being able to embed a drawing into the typing has been a big upgrade!

Even if the drawings are bad (my reminder that the student staring out a window may be more engaged in learning than the student masking by staring and nodding at the teacher…

And I do like handwriting – at least the printing version – and believe that if we are going to stick with this fad of reading and writing and not get back to basics of the even better medium of oral/aural storytelling (with pictures! Thanks YouTube!) then it is important to work with pen(cil) and paper. 

But as the article ends… “learning something involves far more than either typing or handwriting, and the methodwe use to take notes might ultimately be of small importance compared to how we study our notes afterwards.”