[skydhash]

Students also see power drills and cars, and schools don’t use them as part of the curriculum. I have a lot of computing device and still believes in real books and pen or paper for learning anything. The mechanical actions and the physical presence really helps in retention of the materials. Even those TI calculators can be overkill. I’ve only used one in college, and it was for a few exams about polar coordinates and transmission lines, IIRC. For everything else, the simpler scientific calculators were enough. Multiplying matrices and graphing functions doesn’t take that much time at high school and undergraduate level.

[VortexLain]

> The mechanical actions and the physical presence really helps in retention of the materials. Although this is the case for many people, I personally struggle to process information and write it on paper at the same time. Thus, I strongly prefer digital note-taking and use Obsidian or just vim instead of paper.

[tracker1]

I'm not trying to be offensive, but I don't see how typing it into a computer is significantly different than writing it on paper.

Is there something stopping you, or anyone from writing it down and taking notes in class and then reviewing it later as needed? Not just process it in lecture time, but regurgitate it to physical form for later review.

Also, I would definitely constrain this into educational groups, where K-6 are much different from college (post mandatory) education.

[dmbche]

If I may, people write (with pens) slower than than can speak, and thus to take good notes you need to synthesize the material you are being explained. You need to understand what you're writing.

Many people can type as fast/faster than they talk, and when typing it is possible to try and type verbatim what is being said. In this case, there is no understanding. (If you've ever taken a class not all that is said is pertinent and not all that is pertinent is said)

I personally don't revisit my written notes their purpose is uniquely for me to remember/understand what I've written.

[wink]

I highly doubt this is unique. Some teachers (at least when I was in school) said stuff, repeated it, no problem writing it verbatim. Some others put it on the board for you to copy it verbatim, and later in uni.. most people definitely did not type fast enough to capture every word.

Writing down stuff has always been what you make of it.

[rowanG077]

Just because there arepeople who type slow doesnt invalidate the point that typing has a much higher speed ceiling. It's like saying well cars can go slower than some people who walk. So we may as well walk everywhere.

[hunterpayne]

"Many people can type as fast/faster than they talk"

No they can't. An amazing typist is 120 wpm. A slow speaker might be 150 wpm and fast talkers over 300 wpm.

[LtWorf]

Except you don't talk full speed like a california girl on speed during a lecture?

[mos_basik]

>I don't see how typing it into a computer is significantly different...

I haven't read up on it much myself, but any discussion along the lines of this subthread re: "handwriting > typing" is probably discussing research that's starting to be talked about more and more in the past 5 years or so (maybe the pandemic and online learning accelerated interest?)

here's a 5m clip of a neuroscientist presenting to the US Senate this year on correlation between dropping academic performance and use of tech in classrooms in many countries over many years, and asking for more research into mechanisms and causation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fd-_VDYit3U

and here's a paper from a couple years ago describing differences in observed brain activity between handwriting and typewriting and some discussion of how this could be a mechanism of the kind the video was talking about https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10....

>Is there something stopping you from...

No, but I feel like it's not hard to argue that default are important.

[smcg]

shop class and drivers ed used to be offered by schools...

[tracker1]

But you didn't include them in your English or Math classes. They were optional courses, and for older students, not K-6.