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  • In an age where your phone can scan your face and buttons are becoming obsolete,

  • who thinks of writing anything by hand anymore?

  • I know it feels archaic to pick up a pencil made of wood and use, ugh, lead, but writing down your

  • notes could help you pass your classes.

  • Note-taking is very difficult.

  • You have to listen, understand, and transcribe concepts all at the same time.

  • As technology integrates more and more into our classrooms, computers, for some, have become the new notebooks.

  • So we're not writing things down as much, we're not summarizing, we've completely changed how we encode information.

  • Somewhere down the line the emphasis for perfect cursive faded, and kids were taught to type;

  • as fast, and as accurately as they could.

  • A lot of college students now note-take on laptops.

  • However, typing leads to copying a lecture verbatim, and one study found that when students

  • do that they perform worse on tests involving conceptual thinking.

  • So, to understand the best way to take notes, you kinda have to get what note-taking is all about in the brain.

  • There are two ways researchers think note-taking affects your learning: “the encoding hypothesis

  • and theexternal storage hypothesis.”

  • Encoding is when, during the note-taking process, you listen and understand what's

  • being said, then write it down in the time allotted before the speaker moves on to a new topic.

  • It's tough.

  • External storage is your brain storing information outside of itself, so it can retrieve it later.

  • Ok, ok, I know we all thought typing verbatim could help us study better.

  • It's betterexternal storagethan my really slow scribble handwriting,

  • Right?

  • You may not be paying super close attention DURING the lecture, but you can review

  • it later and it's word for word and that's great? Right?

  • Sort of.

  • When you're writing out notes, although you're writing fewer words than when your typing verbatim,

  • your brain is actively summarizing the lecture material.

  • You're encoding messages onto paper.

  • Then when you re-read the handwritten material, that's calledenhanced encoding,” means you're

  • both encoding and storing the knowledge externally.

  • This is considered a “superiormethod for concepts.

  • Why?

  • We don't really know.

  • What we do know is, reviewing typed notes within 24 hours does helps you retain information.

  • Because 19th-century memory theories from Hermann Ebbinghaus showed, over time, if we

  • don't make an effort to RETAIN information, we LOSE the data on an exponential basis;

  • this is called Ebbinghaus' Forgetting Curve.

  • Unless you constantly review material, your ability to remember new material will

  • continue to decline over time.

  • It's like a muscle, to learn requires practice!

  • In the end, physical handwriting works well for concepts because your brain is forced

  • to summarize your lesson before you jot it down.

  • However, laptop note-taking for straight factual information does have equal retention according to this study.

  • So it's sort of up to you, to know what you need to remember in what class and when, and THEN

  • to go back and actually read it to secure that information.

  • The thing is, handwriting isn't GONE.

  • Now technology has gotten good enough that tablets have handwriting recognition, and

  • styluses that work with themso maybe we'll see a resurgence of writing!

  • Maybe

  • Or maybe we'll see voice recording take over everything

  • More research is going to be needed to figure out what's better for future students.

  • What do you think?

  • If you liked this video don't forget to subscribe and why is learning hard anyway?!

  • Crystal explains it in this video here. Having the internet at your fingertips at a laptop,

  • that's also a distraction, but did you know that you're not only distracting yourself,

  • but everyone around you is taking a peek and getting distracted too! It's evolutionary theory.

  • Stay focused you guys and thanks for watching Seeker!

In an age where your phone can scan your face and buttons are becoming obsolete,

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