Pen Still Mightier Than the Laptop For Notetaking?

theodp writes "While waiting to see if the iPad is a game-changer, this CS student continues to take class notes with pen and paper while her fellow students embrace netbooks and notebooks. Why? In addition to finding the act of writing helps cement the lecture material in her mind, there's also the problem of keeping up with the professor: '[While taking notes on a laptop] every five minutes I found myself cursing at not being able to copy the diagram on the board.' So, when it comes to education or business, do you take notes on a notepad/netbook, or stick with good old-fashioned handwriting? Got any tips for making the transition, or arguments for staying the course?"

Comments

Notes

[sopssa]

Taking notes on notepad/netbook is an extremely good idea, and now with WiFi's and 3G's everywhere, you can also chat, email, post insightful posts to slashdot, and go raid in World of Warcraft all at the same time. It also lets you work on your latest coding project or post updates to facebook and twitter. If you're getting hungry towards end of the class, you can just use Google Maps to search for some good pizza joint nearby.

Oh notes.. "what notes? I was a little bit busy online..."

But what does iPad have to do with this? Even if we ignore the fact that iPad doesn't even have a stylus, writing with such is laggy and just messes up the text. You write a lot better on paper. The technology isn't there just yet.

And then theres the thing that with your written notes you're more likely to actually read them again. Write them on computer and you just shove them to some obscure location and never read them again.

Re:Notes

[BetterSense]

I find my fountain pens more reliable than ballpoint pens, but less reliable than pencils. For large amounts of writing, nothing beats a decent fountain pen and some decent premium laser paper. I figured this out in college when I was getting cramps from taking pages of notes and doing pages of math with ballpoints and pencils. Then I discovered that there was this new pen technology out there that doesn't require any down pressure at all and makes writing much easier and more efficient, called a "fountain pen". Now I realize that ballpoints are for signing checks at the bank line other sporadic tasks; real amounts of writing call for real writing tools.

At Law School...

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

At law school, everyone uses laptops. It's a different world than the world of pen and paper. There are a very few students who still take notes the old-fashioned way, and they do remarkably well sometimes, but the simple fact is that when you have a particularly intense class you can get down a lot more information typing than you can with pen and paper.

You still have to be disciplined--turning off your network devices can be helpful, and you also have to avoid taking notes just because everyone else is. (There are times when one person starts typing, then another, and it snowballs, even when there's nothing noteworthy being discussed.) But if you use the laptop as a tool, it's a very effective one. It also lets you learn a bit more, because you can actually do some outside research during class which enriches it for everyone.

The dangers of distraction...

[ThousandStars]

I wrote a post on Laptops, students, and distraction that explains why I forbid laptops in my classes (and the post grew out of a Slashdot comment like this one). From what I've seen, students are better off doing what can be done outside of class outside of class (like reading--which includes PowerPoint) and doing inside class what can't be done outside of class: spontaneous discussion, group questioning/answering/review, and the like.

This seems like the optimal division of time and one that keeps classroom discussions relevant. It also means that not having laptops and cell phones can actually make for a better overall experience.

Re:Are you guys mad?

[maccodemonkey]

I hate to say this on Slashdot... but have you tried.. : gulp : Microsoft Word? At least on the Mac version, it has this great feature... It records audio while you're taking notes, and next to every line of notes is a little speaker icon. If you click the speaker icon, it starts playing starting at the point you added that line of notes. It's great for just writing down the basic concepts, and then jumping through the audio to get the detailed lecture.

Train Your Hand / Arm Muscles

[Jucius Maximus]

Although I graduated some years back, I still advocate the use of pen and paper to students because of final exams. You are going to be sitting in the gymnasiums writing 15 hours of exams in the space of a few days. By hand. On paper.

If you haven't been training up your hand all semester, your arm is going to break down after about 20 minutes because your muscles are not used to manual writing. Good luck being effective on your exams when your wrist is about to fall off.

I experienced this a couple of years out of school when I chose to write the Professional Practice Exam. About 45 minutes into the three hour exam in the freezing cold gym at University of Toronto, I just about gnawed my hand off.