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posted by chromas on Thursday May 09 2019, @01:01AM   Printer-friendly
from the ♪♫ dept.

Phys.org:

If you're a student looking for the most advanced learning machine available, give laptops a pass—and pick up an age-old notebook.

You'll absorb and retain more information if you take notes by hand, according to a study by UCLA, giving you an edge on your tests.

That spiral-bound stack of paper has other advantages, too: You can't zone out on Facebook and Instagram during a lecture, so you are more likely to stay focused.

Putting pen to paper requires a different kind of mental processing than typing does. Sure, typing on a laptop gives you the power to record a lecture nearly word for word—but transcribing verbatim is associated with what's called "shallow cognitive processing." The words may be captured on your screen, but they basically went in one ear and out the other.

Also, your notebook doesn't run Fortnite.


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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday May 09 2019, @02:00AM (9 children)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday May 09 2019, @02:00AM (#841136)

    What worked for me in college was to go to class and pay attention, try to get ahead of the professor's lecture, predict where he was leading. In the boring, obvious classes it just didn't matter if I attended or not, but in the challenging ones I could generally keep up with the lecture presentation and genuinely understand what was being said. By getting a few steps ahead of the presentation, I could also ask much better questions if the opportunity/need arose.

    Now, if I took out pen and tried to put it to paper, that would sap a significant portion of my attention and in the more challenging classes it would lead to me "losing the thread" during the presentation. Fortunately, I had a partner who took impeccable notes, but didn't understand what they meant most of the time, so we'd get together and I'd walk through her notes with her until she "got it" which served as the reinforcement I needed to remember the material long enough to perform it on the exams.

    --
    🌻🌻 [google.com]
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 09 2019, @09:02AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 09 2019, @09:02AM (#841257)

    And you have mastered studying...

      1. put in some effort ahead of time
      2. pay attention
      3. teach others

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Thursday May 09 2019, @02:47PM (7 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday May 09 2019, @02:47PM (#841339) Journal

    When I went to college:
    * laptops didn't exist
    * GUIs didn't exist in any meaningful way
    * if you were really upscale you could have a very bulky desktop with CP/M and 64 K RAM with two floppy drives in your dorm room!
    * I have no idea what Fortnite is as I write this, but there was Adventure, available for CP/M microcomputers of the day -- From Microsoft, when they were somewhat nicer, before the IBM PC came along

    I did use pen and a spiral graph paper notebook. Yes graph paper was what we all pretty much used. For reals. Protractor and other template tools to draw circles, flowcharts, etc. Programmable calculator. 029 keypunch, later moving up to interactive CRT terminal.

    And read books! Yes really! Imagine that. We had these things called textbooks. And I still kept the good ones to this very day! (But now am ready to get rid of them because everything I might ever want to reference is online. And there are fewer days ahead than behind. I won't "someday I might need these!")

    I was asked by department head, yes really, to tutor students for pay. I did some of this. But typically the students who needed this really had trouble grasping the material. Even back then, there was this sense that computers were about to become really important, and there was a gold rush of people signing up for classes they could not understand and getting weeded out.

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday May 09 2019, @02:58PM (6 children)

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday May 09 2019, @02:58PM (#841348)

      In the really slow/obvious classes, I would program a lunar-lander type game on my programmable calculator... it's kind of BASIC and differential equations practical experience, and God knows I wasn't missing anything in the lecture details.

      Social media, of all forms, is far more tempting and engrossing than anything you could ever do with a programmable calculator.

      If people in-class are going to connect to the network and participate with outside stuff during the lecture, I'd far prefer that they just stay home and remote in to an AV feed from the lecture room. It's the same in work meetings - if there's a 60 minute meeting with 2 minutes of content relevant to me, I'd much rather be 95% productively working in my office, passively listening until the good bit (for me) comes up, then I can chime in via remote, say the 15 seconds of information I need to communicate to the group, answer the 45 seconds of followup questions, and not only save 58 minutes of time sitting in the room being less than 5% productive, but also save the time & energy travelling to-from the room.

      --
      🌻🌻 [google.com]
      • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday May 09 2019, @05:13PM (5 children)

        by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday May 09 2019, @05:13PM (#841422) Journal

        I can't imagine what classes would be like today with cell phones going off, social media, etc. Babies crying?

        As for work meetings, I don't have it too bad.

        --
        People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
        • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday May 09 2019, @06:59PM (4 children)

          by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday May 09 2019, @06:59PM (#841478)

          force everyone to voluntarily think alike

          My favorite form of this is: the beatings will continue until morale improves.

          --
          🌻🌻 [google.com]
          • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday May 09 2019, @07:25PM

            by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday May 09 2019, @07:25PM (#841492) Journal

            I was trying for as many oxymorons into as short a phrase as possible.

            The best way to avoid conflict and encourage diversity is to force everyone to voluntarily think alike.

            Conflict is created by Diversity.

            Diversity is when everyone does not think alike.

            Force and Voluntarily.

            --
            People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
          • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday May 09 2019, @07:26PM (2 children)

            by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday May 09 2019, @07:26PM (#841494) Journal

            Here's another one I've posted here a few times:

            Religion is the best way to heal a world that is deeply and violently divided by religion.

            --
            People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
            • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday May 09 2019, @08:50PM (1 child)

              by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday May 09 2019, @08:50PM (#841540)

              Religion is the best way to heal a world that is deeply and violently divided by religion.

              I wouldn't say it's the best way, perhaps the most frequently attempted way, but based on success rates to-date surely there are better ways out there.

              --
              🌻🌻 [google.com]
              • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday May 10 2019, @01:39PM

                by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 10 2019, @01:39PM (#841814) Journal

                It is to get a laugh more than it is to suggest that as the best way.

                The best way to fix your problems with XML is by using more XML.

                --
                People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.