Notetaking - The Stylus is Mightier than the Keyboard

Confession: I am an English Language Arts teacher, and I have terrible handwriting. At the interview for my current position, the principal pulled me aside to comment on it (still, thankfully giving me the job). I have sloppy handwriting because I want to get all the ideas, the thoughts, the words down fast because I have so many words in my head. This is why I love typing - especially in college when it came to extensive literary analyses - sometimes three or four papers due in the same week. The fact that I could type at 70+ words per minute meant I saved hours of time, but the one thing I did not do? I never brought my laptop to class and typed my notes. Why? I couldn't remember them if I did, and if I read them, it was just like reading the lecture I already listened to - they were verbatim.

Over the last year several articles (including this one by NPR) have been published regarding the importance of taking notes by hand versus taking notes by typing. These articles typically refer to a study published in Psychological Science titled "The Pen is Mightier than the Keyboard." The basic idea behind the research is this - when we type notes, we tend to type verbatim, and therefore do little synthesis in our learning process while when we write long-hand, we are forced to summarize and synthesize because we cannot write quickly enough. Sure, folks who type the notes have all the details, but they found they often couldn't draw conclusions about the information like those who hand-wrote those same notes.

This particular study has lead to an outcry by some educators about the importance of keeping notebooks in the classroom and having students handwrite their notes rather than type them into their digital devices. There is an argument for handwritten notes, the texture of paper meeting with a good gel pen, however, there are other digital options which allow students the opportunity to take notes in a way that will help them synthesize, but also keep them digital so that they do not fall out of the notebook.

Unlike the early 2000s, (when I was an undergrad) the ability to digitally draw and handwrite using touchscreens and styluses has grown. Students can actually handwrite on a device, and that's where the argument for sketchnoting comes in. If you're not familiar with sketchnoting, you can see a great explanation here. It is a form of visual note-taking which appeals not only to the handwriter (even if they have poor handwriting like me) but also to all the doodlers sitting in your classroom. (It is important to note that visual note-taking is not the same as writing an outline - it focuses not just on text but visual cues.) While it started as a pen and paper note-taking technique, it has really migrated to being a digital note-taking technique which circumnavigates typing altogether. It also allows for a level of synthesis and drawing conclusions that typing verbatim does not.

In creating and designing their own notes digitally, students have the ability to learn like the old form of note-taking, and yet keep it digital, share it with others, post it online, and etc. There are several apps available for students to sketchnote the occasional lecture or TEDtalk in class. A great lesson idea would be to have students create and share them, then vote which sketchnote included the best information to share to be posted, photocopied, used on the test, etc. Another idea would involve breaking students into groups to analyze a variety of articles which they would separately sketchnote and share. It is just another tool in a wide range of neat ideas we can use digitally.

#notetaking #sketchnoting