I urge you to play this video while reading the post below, to get fully embraced by the topic.
I hand write my notes in lectures and seminars, simply because my attention drifts away if I type on my laptop. However, most of the people on the course use their electronic equipment for these purposes. The moment the lecturer opens his mouth, their fingers start a race across the keyboard. It sounds as if a swarm of bees entered the room. Apparently some people listen to typing sounds to relax*, but for me it has a completely opposite effect. It freaks me out. Especially that people type so much! What on earth do they type? I sat in the very same lecture, made a half-page of notes while others have been typing almost constantly for the entire hour! I know that some of this typing was very important facebook messages, but still. Do they type up the lecture verbatim? Am I missing something important, because I don't write until my hand wants to detach from the rest of my body? Or should I be happy what an efficient note-taker I am?
Laptops should be banned in lecture theatres and seminar rooms. The sound of typing is distracting, if nothing else. Sometimes, when I'm not sat at the front, I can't even hear the lecturer properly because 100 odd people bang on their keyboards. Plus, seeing other people's screens with all the distracting stuff up there (amazon, twitter, facebook, news sites, ebay, reddit, you name it) is not helping to concentrate on what is going on in the lecture.
Instead, why don't we get back to a good old pen and paper? Low cost and, most importantly, quiet. (Good practice for exams as well, it's important to train your hand to write, without auto-correct.) Sometimes old-fashioned methods are better than the new ones. I believe this is so with note-taking. You simply don't pay as much attention to what you type as you do when you write. There's also apparently such a thing as muscle memory, so if you write something with your own hand, you'll retain it better. Apparently writing in blue ink also helps. I'm no memory scientist, but there is something in all of this. I do notice that I retain material better if it's hand-written. And, oh yes, we'll also avoid this terrible noise during lecture. I'd really appreciate that actually.
*This is actually a thing. When I was looking for a video to accompany this post, hundreds of entries came up on youtube. People actually do record themselves typing things up on different types of keyboards, you can find all sorts of videos from short 3-minute ones to some dragging for hours (I'm serious). I would never have believed anyone could consider typing sound as something relaxing, but people claim that it calms them down. Peculiarities of the human brain.
Laptops should be banned in lecture theatres and seminar rooms. The sound of typing is distracting, if nothing else. Sometimes, when I'm not sat at the front, I can't even hear the lecturer properly because 100 odd people bang on their keyboards. Plus, seeing other people's screens with all the distracting stuff up there (amazon, twitter, facebook, news sites, ebay, reddit, you name it) is not helping to concentrate on what is going on in the lecture.
Instead, why don't we get back to a good old pen and paper? Low cost and, most importantly, quiet. (Good practice for exams as well, it's important to train your hand to write, without auto-correct.) Sometimes old-fashioned methods are better than the new ones. I believe this is so with note-taking. You simply don't pay as much attention to what you type as you do when you write. There's also apparently such a thing as muscle memory, so if you write something with your own hand, you'll retain it better. Apparently writing in blue ink also helps. I'm no memory scientist, but there is something in all of this. I do notice that I retain material better if it's hand-written. And, oh yes, we'll also avoid this terrible noise during lecture. I'd really appreciate that actually.
*This is actually a thing. When I was looking for a video to accompany this post, hundreds of entries came up on youtube. People actually do record themselves typing things up on different types of keyboards, you can find all sorts of videos from short 3-minute ones to some dragging for hours (I'm serious). I would never have believed anyone could consider typing sound as something relaxing, but people claim that it calms them down. Peculiarities of the human brain.
