We have been told that buying a laptop or a tablet for every student is a civil rights issue. Vendors of new technology might find it awkward to make such a claim for their products, but “reformers” do not.
Lest the inevitable technology boosters complain that I am spreading doubt, let me iterate and reiterate that I love technology. Nonetheless, it is important to acknowledge its drawbacks.
An article in Scientific American warns, “Don’t Take Notes with a laptop.”
Why? Students using a laptop tend to transcribe the teacher or professor’s remarks verbatim.
“Obviously it is advantageous to draft more complete notes that precisely capture the course content and allow for a verbatim review of the material at a later date. Only it isn’t. New research by Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer demonstrates that students who write out their notes on paper actually learn more. Across three experiments, Mueller and Oppenheimer had students take notes in a classroom setting and then tested students on their memory for factual detail, their conceptual understanding of the material, and their ability to synthesize and generalize the information. Half of the students were instructed to take notes with a laptop, and the other half were instructed to write the notes out by hand. As in other studies, students who used laptops took more notes. In each study, however, those who wrote out their notes by hand had a stronger conceptual understanding and were more successful in applying and integrating the material than those who used took notes with their laptops.”
Why the difference?
“Writing by hand is slower and more cumbersome than typing, and students cannot possibly write down every word in a lecture. Instead, they listen, digest, and summarize so that they can succinctly capture the essence of the information. Thus, taking notes by hand forces the brain to engage in some heavy “mental lifting,” and these efforts foster comprehension and retention. By contrast, when typing students can easily produce a written record of the lecture without processing its meaning, as faster typing speeds allow students to transcribe a lecture word for word without devoting much thought to the content.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Here’s a link to the Scientific American article.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-learning-secret-don-t-take-notes-with-a-laptop/
And a link to the Scientific American article about why reading hard copy is better than reading on a screen: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-reading-brain-in-the-digital-age-why-paper-still-beats-screens/
Tch,tch, tch… look at those Montessori students writing all of their notes in cursive. How 20th century!
(Could it be that all of these rigorous 21st century learning skills aren’t all that they are cracked up to be?)
I agree we are failing our students with all the emphasis and spending on technology but I think this ship has sailed. I have been teaching middle school for many years and most of my incoming 7th graders can’t write cursive or even print to save their lives. The increasing use of e-readers is also, in my opinion, diminishing close reading, processing, and analysis. But these changes are not going away and we will have to find new methods for encouraging higher level thinking (if this is what our educational leaders even want).
On an unrelated point, please note that Arne Duncan has suddenly become an advocate for public education (did the NEA resolution get to him?):
http://www.philly.com/philly/education/20140713_Ed_Secretary_Duncan__Philly_school_funding__unacceptable_.html
As a former newspaper reporter, I have always found handwritten notes best. I still take notes, whether I’m at a meeting, or taking a class. As far as Arne goes, I think he’s starting to realize that like the emperor, he has no clothes. If I am ever in a situation where Arne Duncan is appearing, I will treat him like I will treat Obama – I will turn my back to him. That’s far kinder than what the two have done to us.
Arne Duncan is blinded enough to believe that saying that Philly lawmakers need to do more takes the heat off him. If all the expense related to common core (aka testing and all the common core consultants, PD workshops and study materials and any other RTTT compliance nonsense) were stopped today, Philly would have a lot more money to focus on REAL EDUCATION. Does Duncan think that educators and administrators don’t recognize this?
What is not going away is human biology/neurology. Tech is here to stay, but that does not mean that replacing the superior method of taking notes by hand with typing on a laptop or on anything else must necessarily continue. If Micro-fart and the other tech giants had any scruples, which they do not, they would promote the idea of taking notes by hand and later transcribing them onto the laptop via typing or perhaps better still speech to text as a way of revisiting the material and saving it in an editable, probably more legible form. Here, free of charge is the next idea for a study for the authors of the Scientific American article: is speech to text superior to typing as a transcription method for the purpose of further understanding/internalizing the material? Is either similar in terms of retention of the material to the testing effect brought on by pop quizzes at the end of the week? I’m betting on speech to text. We didn’t evolve to type.
GST, I’m very tired of this “not going away” dodge. You bow to corporate idiocy as though it is an unstoppable force, but it just isn’t.
Jon, you’re so right about what is “not going away”. Humanity.
Dear Chemtchr, what is not going to go away are young people who type first and write hardly ever, who text and engage in social networking and video gaming nonstop, and who communicate and think and learn in ways very different from, at least, my old generation did. We should do everything in our power to stand up to the technocrats who are marketing tools which do not educate, but I think we need to recognize that Gates and company have captured our kids before long before they enter our schoolhouses, and teachers have to adjust.
The technocrats may have captured the kids with their fancy toys, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be managing the use of that technology in schools and at home. We get battered daily with splashy marketing campaigns, but someday maybe administrators will listen again when teachers tell them that all the new toys do not necessarily lead to better learning.
Research vs feel good assumptions, research wins every time. Just like college and career ready.. a feel good assumption of the reorm crowd.
and to this I would add that learning cursive is really important. Because…like reading … if the process is TOO SLOW it imedes comprehension. Cursive enables an appropriate speed so as focus on what is being said.. and not the “letter forming”. The study makes perfect sense. Students who are listening while the lecture is on going are focusing on the lecturer. Students who are typing word for word are focused on the typing of the word and not the content. They must go back later to read the material. I wonder if the authors looked at the length of time before a student went back to review what they typed and if this had an impact.
When I went for psychoneurological testing a few years ago, one of the recommendations was that I do not try to take notes by had as that uses up too much brain energy and I cannot do/learn/process anything else if I am focused on the actual action of writing letters. (I am 53 and had a very hard time learning to print or write in school).
So while the handwriting of notes may hold true for most, keep in mind those of us who are atypical!
One of my daughters and I both fall into that category; I can remember letter sequences that I’ve typed just fine, but the act of writing by hand more than short notes is excruciating (and no fun for whoever has to read the results past the first page LOL). My Masters comprehensive exams would have been done in 1/3 the time if I’d been able to type them.
That said, though, the act of writing mindfully is another story; I found that calligraphy, of all things, can be meditatively centering. 🙂
As a special education teacher (involuntarily retired), pculliton’s and crunchydeb’s situation were something I saw frequently. There are no one size fits all situations. Students who do not process information fast enough may have to rely on more intensive review strategies than the student who can summarize on the spot. Some students may need to rely on speech to text transcriptions of lectures that they can then chunk and summarize perhaps still through speech to text applications if dysgraphia impedes their own writing. Technology certainly has opened up more avenues for supporting students. The problem is when students believe they no longer have to process the information beyond what the machine does for them.
Here is a link to an article in Psychology Today: Why Writing by Hand Could Make You Smarter. In surprising studies, researchers find benefits to setting keyboards aside.
Published on March 14, 2013 by William R. Klemm, D.V.M, Ph.D. in Memory Medic
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/memory-medic/201303/why-writing-hand-could-make-you-smarter
ALwaysLearning.. Thanks.. will read right now!
I just read the article and yes makes sense! But I still think that there is a connection which can be compared with readers. A young child having trouble with reading is often at a stage where he/she must look at each letter for its sound and the sounds made by combinations of letters so that the focus is so much on this that comprehension takes a back seat. Once the knowledge of letter/sound correspondences becomes second nature, this frees up room for comprehension. I think writing in cursive allows the brain to focus more on the content and less on the letters. Cursive can be done with a lot more speed and more gestaultly. Just thinking…
Note taking by hand, how can that help? Where is the disruption? Where are the 21st century skills? How can Chris Cerf, Joel Klien and /Sir Michael make money off that?
But… the article points out the brain connections that are fired up with cursive (and not with typing) so using a laptop further impedes understanding.
On a trip to Europe long ago, I took a camera. It was more valuable than Great Britain permitted me to have, so they took custody of it, making it available in Dover when I continued my trip to France. I was without camera, but I had been sketching since grade 4. The sketches I made in that segment of my trip comport with the Scientific American article. My memory of England is more vivid than anyting on the rest of the trip. Moreover, the film that recorded the rest of the trip has long since bit the dust. I stlll have some of the sketches.
Early twentieth century texts for teacher education (not just art teachers) were replete with illustrations of children sketching from models such as stuffed animals, household pots and pans, and such. The new technology of black chalkboards was often used for bilateral drawing. Children would be called upon to stand in front of the board with white chalk in each hand. The challenge was to create huge and continuous marks on the board, from fully extended arms with gradual, graceful, and symmetrical changes in movement that would leave a beautiful record for others to admire. Choreographed movement combined with drawing as a kinesthetic activity..
Two quotes by Maria Montessori:
“The hands are the instruments of man’s intelligence”
“The human hand allows the mind to reveal itself.”
We learn by doing, by participating, by experiencing.
How wonderfully simple and true.
Wonderful!!
Although not directly related to the post itself, this is related to your comment, and I think is an indirect link, and it too, is about photography and thinking.
Prior to the advent of digital photography, photographers using film (and designated cameras!) had to be discriminating as to the number of pictures they shot simply because a roll of film was limited to a certain number of pictures. Printing was not a small expense either. Even then, there might be only a few worthy of printing or reprinting. Composition, color, lighting, movement all needed to be consciously considered.
But with the advent of digital photography, its ease and nearly unlimited storage capacity, it now is possible to point and shoot without truly seeing the subject and store all 2,000 images. Not that it is not without merit, but again, the mind, composition etc are removed from the process.
Sketching is a first-rate “aide memoire” — it used to be part of liberal education.
When I sit in on college classes at Harvard sometimes (I work there). Every kid is sitting there with a laptop and what’s on the screen is not usually notes their working on – it’s email or facebook or something similar. I think perhaps having the laptop there makes it pretty tempting to do something else during the lecture and the lectures are now videoed too so students can always re-watch later. My daughter who is in 9th grade says the same thing about her classes. Everyone is secretly texting or snapchatting during classes. The kids are pretty good about hiding their electronics.
Yup, this is main problem with computers and other electronics in the classroom. A glowing screen is irresistable, and wi-fi is deadly.
I took courses at Harvard Extension from 1988 to 2008. My earlier classes were wonderful! I still have beautiful handwritten notebooks from lessons given on the chalkboard. Students could write at the pace the Professor put the notes on the board and lectured. There was time for questions when things weren’t quite clear. The later classes were a nightmare. The slides went by so quickly and were useless for learning/studying. The faculty had a new tool that they didn’t (still don’t as far as I can tell) know how to use where they crammed way too much information into each slide/handout. I called them PowerPointless.
I actually word-process ti put notes on the board– via a computer connected to an LCD projector (or smartboard, which is not a necessity). As my typing ability is almost as bad as my keybording ability, students are able to keep up!The handwriting function on the interactive board, alas, goes unused.
I wish I could draw and diagram for them! As it is I am just glad I do not have to write on the board anymore. Same goes for commenting on student writing; I try to have everyone use Google Docs so I can comment this way– I know they cannot read my cursive, and printing, well, I would be focusing on forming the letters, not on the students’ work.
Believe my, for some of us, these tools have changed our lives so that we can have a more level playing field with more typical educators!
I do a lot of interviewing in my work and I found this to be true for me. I thought it was just me.
One of my sons works for a manufacturing company, a Honda supplier, and his employer would periodically direct the “quality” folks (‘quality’ is a job description in manufacturing, not a rank) to individual online learning sessions on various topics. The workers would attend online courses with video instructors individually, working at their own pace whenever they could fit it in.
He told me they stopped that and they now conduct face to face training in groups (like a traditional class) because they found the teams worked better together when they learned the new process together and had to both listen and interact with one another and the instructor in discussion during “class”. I was curious about the “listening to others” part of that process, whether that is developed more in a “live” group, because my experience at work over the years leads me to believe that it may be the most important piece of working well with others.
My own concern about ed tech is not the technology part but the budgetary reality part. I’m afraid lawmakers will find it extremely tempting to cut costs by replacing live classes and instruction with online learning, and I’m also afraid this will happen mostly in low and middle income schools because that’s where these experiments are being conducted. I think that has to be honestly addressed, and I don’t mean “addressed” by calling anyone who raises the question a Luddite and not answering the question.
Thanks for adding to the wisdom of many reporters, in some cases wisdom learned the hard way. But I think this has to be nuanced, at least for the news.
Yesterday, I was one of the Chicago Teachers Union delegates assigned to the “Educational issues” committee which debated the Common Core resolutions. I’ve also been reporting for Substance for more than 35 years, so both were poised to be fun. The Chicago Resolution opposing Common Core lost to an executive council resolution continuing the AFT compromises. As I’m reporting at substancenews.net, that means AFT is likely to vote to continue its critical support for Common Core.
Technology is a blessing and a challenge (I think anyone who calls technologies that serve us is wrong…).
Like some others, I am physically challenged at this point, unable to walk long distances because of long term spinal, knee and hip “problems”. I utilize a cane “”Fashionable Canes” — highly recommended Diane) to get around, albeit slowly.
The technology of the scooter really helps those of us, mostly senior citizens (here at AFT, retiree delegates) get around. Not all of us are slowed, but the “demographics” increase predictably with the “age cohort.”
Thanks to the AFT and the growing awareness of large convention halls like the one we’re in in Los Ageles, I was able to get one of the scooters that the union provides for those of us who can’t walk blocks and blocks every day to do our work, so I wound up in the committee meeting on a four-wheeler, which was necessary if I’m to get around inside the huge convention center, but adds another layer of technology between me and the story and work. Fortunately, I had learned long ago the wisdom of what Diane reports here and was not additionally burdened with a computer to get in the way of my participation in the meeting and taking notes by hand to report what happened to our readers. Although my reporting may lack the precise precision of some who are fiercely keyboarding throughout an event, I think the problems associated with computer notetaking are greater than the rewards — unless, as happens at most conventions, the press is provided with a space on a table with adequate power supplied and nearby.
Thanks for the link George. I am an ESL teacher and the and the ELA standards are a disaster for ELLs. New Jersey previously had wonderful standards specifically for ESL. The CCCS show no promise other than perhaps providing Weingaten with her Bill Gates fix.
Monks wrote, copied and illuminated text by hand before the invention of moveable type. Moveable type enabled the spread of literacy and mass communication with all of its associated social effects. Typing on any device from the earliest Underwoods to the latest laptops have more to do with speed and legibility than any further advance in communication. Yes I’m not including email and the internet as that has nothing to do with taking notes, the topic at hand. Email etc. is just a further enhancement of the innovations that moveable type caused. Again, this is about note taking. Tech will come and go. What is not going away is human biology/neurology. Tech is here to stay, but that does not mean that replacing the superior method of taking notes by hand with typing on a laptop or anything else must necessarily continue as the fashion trend that it is. If Micro-fart and the other tech giants had any scruples, which they do not, they would promote the idea of taking notes by hand and later transcribing them onto the laptop via typing or perhaps better still speech to text as a way of revisiting the material and saving it in an editable, probably more legible form. Here, free of charge is the next idea for a study for the authors of the Scientific American article: is speech to text superior to typing as a transcription method for the purpose of further understanding/internalizing the material? Is either similar in terms of retention of the material to the testing effect brought on by teacher created pop quizzes at the end of the week? I’m betting on speech to text, I’m betting that what happens in the brain when written language is turned into speech furthers learning better than turning one form of text into another.
Speech adds another dimension to the equation. I used to read my notes out loud or read text out loud when I needed to pay greater attention to grasp meaning. Hand written notes definitely helped me, but that was another step in the process depending on the task. For most people, a multi-modal approach is probably most productive either in concert or in isolation or both.
I agree 100%. I will take notes by hand, including both text and drawings. I feel like I am better listener because I am not tempted to check my social media feeds if I don’t have the device in front of me.
In fact, I got rid of my iPad keyboard case in favor of a Moleskine iPad case. The iPad is on one side, and a notebook on the other. The best of both worlds! 😉
I was extremely frustrated by the school system that wanted us to type the IEP at the meeting and have it ready at the end for distribution. How we were supposed to be able to take part in such a critical discussion and type at the same time, I don’t know. I used to take a draft hard copy and then edit at the meeting with handwritten notes on the draft which I could then transcribe after the meeting when I had time to do it justice. It was one of the less thought out directives I received. Fortunately, they were not wedded to it, especially because they were fanatic about not having errors in the final version. They lived in fear of parents with lawyers.
I taught for six years in 1:1 high school where everyone had a laptop. I found that the students, as good as they were, often did not produce the same quality of work and thinking as when I worked in an “analog” school. Also, their ability to memorize things was diminished. Those who did best were those who took manuscript notes.
I often insisted that they take manuscript notes because manually and graphically creating words on a page seemed to enhance memory and thought. Typing is just pushing buttons; you can train a parakeet to do that.
But what do I know – I’m a Latin teacher; I teach “1st Century Skills.” 😉
This is well worth the read, hat tip to AlwaysLearning above for posting the link. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/memory-medic/201303/why-writing-hand-could-make-you-smarter
I would be happier if there was even some discussion of the profit motive here. That also applies to textbooks of course, or any other product. If we could stipulate that it exists, that it is possible this is being pushed for a variety of reasons, some of them good some of them maybe not so altruistic, but I don’t even hear that much.
Because that’s how markets work, or are supposed to work. The newer entry has to offer some measurable increase in value over the product or service they are replacing and that has to be weighed against cost. I thought we were “market-based” in schools now and all about “value-added”? No?
Thank you, Chiara!
This is much bigger than cursive note-taking. Nellie Mae “Foundation” and Pearson “Foundation” conspired to “flip” my high school to iPads.
They imposed learning-obstruction apps like Schoology which require kids to use iPads instead of paper to do and submit their work. There’s no pedagogical basis, no experience base, and no evidence that students can learn at all in this cloud-based fog. 40% of last years 9th grade is awash in failed courses, and triumph has been declared.
When I am hand-writing, I often go back and annotate the very notes I just took as the professor elaborates on main ideas. My notes end up being highly diagrammed. What I find most debilitating (when typing notes) is dealing with formatting issues–auto-formatting is supposed to aid the fluidity of your typing, but it interrupts your train of thought when you want to go back and add things.
Something else that is useful when taking notes on paper is having the opportunity to “think-doodle”: to draw on the page while processing the lecture/discussion. There is definitely a left/right brain connection when you combine the artistic aspects of putting pen to paper with the analytical ordering of concepts. Taking notes by hand is, no doubt, a whole brain activity.
This is my biggest problem with taking notes on a computer as well. Even if I make incomplete notes for my students, the stupid formatting makes it impossible to type them in a way that makes sense for the kids. It drives me crazy.
If you are going to “take notes” with a laptop, you might as well have the computer do all the recording and transcription for you. That way, you don’t even have to be in class. Just set the computer on your desk at the start and pick it up afterward.
Oh, wait. Just have a video camera connected to the internet.
Maybe we could just eliminate the student from the picture entirely and let their computer take the classes and standardized tests for them.
Why not?
The students would love it for obvious reasons (especially ones like Bill Gates, who like to skip classes) and teachers would probably also love it because that way, all their “students” (bots) would get perfect scores on the tests and they would not have to do any grading, get VAM-based merit pay etc.
or, maaaybe we could eliminate BOTH the students AND the teachers and replace them ALL with bots.
Isn’t technology wonderful? It’s all so liberating.
There is an interesting article just posted from Washington Post’s Valerie Strauss: “How Microsoft will make money from Common Core (despite what Bill Gates said)”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/07/12/how-microsoft-will-make-money-from-common-core-despite-what-bill-gates-said/
“I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling [of public education money] is going on in here!” — Captain Bill
My daughter is a young attorney, and in her demanding practice, she finds it easier and more effective to take notes by hand vs. on a tablet or laptop. She also said that in law school, she could look around the lecture halls and see students using their laptops for many other purposes unrelated to the study of Kate.
“. . . the study of Kate.”
What is the study of Kate?
Now I remember a rompin fun couple of nights of studying Kate years ago but that was a more personal thing! :-}
One of my best course in college is an upper division science course. The professor told us from day one to not bother taking notes in class because he will only write a few equations on board every class and we will just spend our time talking about the equations and the science. And talking we did, there is no way to take note for that class because most of the time is spent on talking, explaining things to and arguing with each other. We were encourage to keep a journal of what we did but most us just skipped that part. Still I thoroughly enjoyed the course because I was able to learn a lot with seemingly very little effort. Plus now I know, having taught for a couple of years, that it is not easy to replicate it without a deep knowledge about the subject, loads of teaching experience, and the support of others. My only regret is that I have so little notes to show for it because everything is in my head.
I work in an environment where the TFA types all walk around with their laptops from meeting to meeting. During these “meetings” no one is making eye contact with anyone else. They are constantly reading and answering emails (they claim to be wonderful at multi-tasking), their meetings are pretty scripted (they each know ahead of time what they want to convey) and the meetings are timed down to the minute because they have other meetings to attend. They have a predetermined agenda that is nothing more than a report out of what they have done or plan to do.
What is missing in this picture is 1) common courtesy 2) any real give and take interaction of ideas 3) any pretense of caring what someone else thinks or has to say
What is being promoted as education in K-12 classrooms today is exactly what is needed to prepare drones for these meetings. Yes I’m old, but I long for people to look at one another in the eye and listen and compromise and give a sh*t about what others can contribute.
Durn, I keep forgetting those delightful words of Sir Coleman- “no one gives a sh*t what you think”
He apparently sits in those types of meetings and knows the truth of those words.
Such a clear explanation of why TFA is a fail.
If Lowe’s is a corporate TFA sponsor, you should send a copy of your comments to them.
Diane-
I agree that note taking by hand is more beneficial than on a laptop outside of students with auditory and attentional disorders; along with fine motor deficits, dysgraphia and physical impairments. There are many students with disabilities that preclude them from handwriting notes or benefiting when forced to take notes by hand. As an advocate I hear all too often that teachers can’t provide notes; and there are no peers with strong note taking skills to provide this assistance. At the end of every school day it is about a student’s access to quality instruction in the classroom and too many students with disabilities are denied this access.
That’s one thing about Power Point that I do like: I print the notes in advance for my kids who need special assistance: not just students who have special needs or English Language Learners, but also to kids who have injured hands that cannot write. I tell the kids to add detail as I talk and to mark and highlight things as we go. I also put all of my notes on my website so that kids who are absent can get the notes.
My daughter who is a doctoral research fellow in Cognitive Studies at Teachers College, Columbia University responds, “I am not sure I agree with this. While there are benefits to writing by hand, heavy lifting can be achieved through other instructional means. Having an accurate representation of what the professor says in a lecture can be critical if the professor devises exams based on his lecture — as my statistics professor did this summer. As such, an abstraction of his lecture would have not helped me nearly as much as accurate note taking.”
Obviously, there are exceptions to the research unless you define the specific parameters of application.
It is easy to miss the point of the study by getting “hung up” on the fine motor connection. For those who have visual-cognitive challenges, such as dyslexia, there may not be a difference in modality of note-taking. For those who have difficulty hand-forming letters with fluency, of course note-taking by hand will be a challenge.
The whole premise of the study is based on the fact that the note-takers actually have mastered writing by hand. The skills of the general population are changing, no doubt, but anecdotal evidence that counters this study needs to be qualified against the common dispositions of the study groups. Obviously, those who struggle with hand-writing with any sort of fluency would not be cleared for this study.
Sorry, Mary. I put my above comment in the wrong place.
I’m curious as to how effective taking notes on a computer is in math and science classes that often involve graphs, equations and other notation not easily done on a computer – even with appropriate software. I would have thought that the equations in statistics would present similar problems.
This issue is so much bigger than notes: handwriting vs typed. It seems that the big picture isn’t getting enough play time. The big issues might be:
***What are the important activities we should have students doing (and there is no prescriptive list, no one ‘best way’, not that easy);
***What tools are best for the learning activity (and no ‘one tool above them all!);
***How can we address inequitable distribution of technology (and we need to take Apple, Microsoft, Pearson etc. out of this discussion: their primary mission is to make money. Businesses won’t ever push a solution that is best for students if also it is bad for their bottom line.)
These problems are complex and must be re-framed and better expressed. I would love to see us put all this passion and expertise and perspective into exploring and defining this ‘problem space’. All too often we see detailed and cleverly-designed plans that don’t solve the real problem. All that wasted passion and brainpower and social energy. Like Covey would say, make sure you lean the ladder on the right wall before you set about climbing it.
Sharon and I are spending part of the summer making sure that our nine-year-old son Josh learns “cursive.” We downloaded the worksheets and bought a book (the old Palmer method the nuns trained me in at St. Elizabeth’s in Linden, New Jersey). He does one letter a day (except when we were here in Los Angeles as Chicago delegates to the AFT convention). Josh is a very good student by all measures (grades and standardized test scores, when he takes them), a very enthusiastic learner, and a good baseball player. But we discovered last year that he couldn’t read “cursive” because they stopped teaching it. This is getting dangerous for lots of kids, since lots is still written in cursive. It’s simple code breaking, but if you aren’t learning the codes, you’re still in trouble and frustrated.
We didn’t stop using our memories when writing was invented.
We didn’t stop using our memories even when books began being printed inexpensively after the 15th Century (in the “West”).
And we didn’t stop talking to one another after the telegraphs and telephones…
And so it goes…
These new technologies will eventually be put in their place, but only after massive adjustments and an end to some of their arrogances. Meanwhile, kids are learning to read best at bedtime with their mothers and converse over meals and in other times with families, then friends, then…
Our enemies are making some of this harder, but we’re still going to come out OK.
Anyone who wants to read our top ten reports from the AFT convention, which adjourned yesterday, can read them at http://www.substancenews.net. I think we have the most extensive coverage, and I know we have the most accurate coverage, thanks to a group of reporters (and reporter historians) who have long covered AFT. It was nice that so many of us were also voting (and speaking) delegates this convention. And things will be even more interesting when we get to Minneapolis in 2016. By then, both Los Angeles (under new leadership and preparing to strike) and Chicago (under CORE and preparing for the 2015 contract negotiations after we get rid of Rahm Emanuel) will have had some more interesting times.
Again…
It’s http://www.substancenews.net.
“***What are the important activities we should have students doing (and there is no prescriptive list, no one ‘best way’, not that easy);
***What tools are best for the learning activity (and no ‘one tool above them all!);
***How can we address inequitable distribution of technology (and we need to take Apple, Microsoft, Pearson etc. out of this discussion: their primary mission is to make money. Businesses won’t ever push a solution that is best for students if also it is bad for their bottom line.)”
You mean there are no magic bullets?! You mean teachers actually have to think?! And here I thought Duncan and his corporate masters were the greatest thing since… I’m afraid you are too logical.
Why do we not readily see the obvious answer: direct instruction on the key skills of effective note-taking, regardless of the platform? Paper is, after all, nothing more than a platform without electricity.
Pls read the linked articles referenced in the comments. The neurology of different methods of taking notes is note the same even though on a superficial level the activity is. Different parts of the brain are engaged in different ways depending on what method is used. It makes a difference.
Neither long hand or laptop work for me. What works best is to record the lecture and then carefully summarize what has transpired.