SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Step into any college lecture hall and you are likely to find a sea of students typing away at open, glowing laptops as the professor speaks. But you won't see that when I'm teaching.
Though I make a few exceptions, I generally ban electronics, including laptops, in my classes and research seminars.
That may seem extreme. After all, with laptops, students can, in some ways, absorb more from lectures than they can with just paper and pen. They can download course readings, look up unfamiliar concepts on the fly and create an accurate, well-organized record of the lecture material. All of that is good.
But a growing body of evidence shows that over all, college students learn less when they use computers or tablets during lectures. They also tend to earn worse grades. The research is unequivocal: Laptops distract from learning, both for users and for those around them. It's not much of a leap to expect that electronics also undermine learning in high school classrooms or that they hurt productivity in meetings in all kinds of workplaces.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Saturday November 25 2017, @10:22AM (6 children)
You should have taken a course in shorthand and/or stenography. Court clerks can "take notes" all day long, and only miss a word now and then. Of course, it's a real fad to blame the professor because you came to class unprepared.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 25 2017, @11:42AM (3 children)
G-E-O-M-E-T-R-Y
the professor
H-I-G-H S-C-H-O-O-L
came to class unprepared
I came prepared to to things the way that had served me perfectly fine for 10 years of school.
...then I ran into his One Microsoft Way.
You goddamned Authoritarians all stick together.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Runaway1956 on Saturday November 25 2017, @12:03PM (2 children)
So, you always make excuses? This teacher - he was new at your school? You had never heard of him before? Or, you rode the short bus to the short school, and none of the students ever discussed the teachers? Was he a short teacher, as well? And, did NO ONE pass his course? Or did only ten percent of students pass his course? Tell us more about hell year in geometry, and the sad short students who couldn't keep up.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 25 2017, @12:19PM (1 child)
I passed. I got marked down, however, because my gait didn't match his my-way-or-the-highway rigidity.
Intelligent instructors don't do that kind of stupid shit.
"Don't tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results." --Lt.General George S. Patton Jr.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday November 25 2017, @01:55PM
Except, Patton was talking about mature people, with education and training behind them. Patton wasn't addressing high school kids with neither.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @07:25AM (1 child)
Clerks transcribe general English language. In STEM related classes you write down field specific terms, their definitions, and lots of math/symbols. Do the shorthand techniques still work for those domains?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday November 27 2017, @10:31AM
Uhhhh - yes, of course. You can shorten just about any term used in the English language. The military does it all the time. Closest point of approach - CPA. An unidentified aircraft is a bogey, an unidentified ship is a skunk. Whatever you're talking about, there are abbreviations, shortened versions, whatever. Shorthand need not be especially legible, it doesn't need be any more detailed than YOU are going to need when you are studying your notes later.
The whole point was, to learn to take notes QUICKLY. I dare say that even without a course in shorthand, some people can take notes a lot faster than others. When taking notes, do you actually LOOK AT your notes, or can you write while watching/listening to the lecturer?
If/when I've thought that I needed to take notes, I've often been rushed, but I always got the most important points onto paper, for later reference. And, with note taking, that IS all you need - those most important points. It's not a full fledged journal after all.