Even when students paid attention and took copious notes on their laptops, they still didn’t learn as well. In fact, the copiousness of their notes may be part of the problem, the study found. Laptop users are inclined to use long verbatim quotes, which they type somewhat mindlessly. The handwriters are more selective. They “wrote significantly fewer words than those who typed.” It may be, the researchers reported, “that longhand note takers engage in more processing than laptop note takers, thus selecting more important information to include in their notes, which enables them to study” more efficiently.
John Evans on 20 Sep 17"No one learns without making mistakes. Quite the opposite-we learn when we make mistakes. But in the classroom, making mistakes and taking risks can be at best unrewarded, and at worst ridiculed and unnecessarily penalized. I asked my 21-year-old son the other day what high school class had made him feel safe to make mistakes. He said that he never made mistakes. Really? He explained that he only did the work if he knew he was going to succeed. That made me think about my own teaching: Do I create a classroom where students will be risk takers?"
