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From a recent issue of Wired:
Study after study shows we remember things better when we write them—our brain stores the letter-writing motion, which is much more memorable than just the mashing of a key that feels like every other key. We think in fragments, too, in shapes and colors and ideas that just don't come through on a keyboard. "Think about how many things that are built start as a drawing," Bathiche says. "Most things, right? Everything you're wearing probably started as a drawing."
You can't type out the folds of a dress, or the gentle curves of a skyscraper. Drawing with your stubby finger on a touchscreen isn't much better. Humans are tool-based creatures: Our fingers can do amazingly intricate things with a pen, a brush, or a scalpel, that we can't replicate with a mouse or the pads of our fingers. Our computers are giving back that kind of detailed control. In turn, the pen is opening up new ways of digital expression, new tools for communication, new ways to interact with our tech.
My wife's cousin's husband is a cartoonist for the New Yorker. He uses a high-end Wacom digitizer. Hasn't the problem of the high tech pen been solved?
Original Submission
(Score: 1) by termigator on Thursday July 09 2015, @04:52PM
Then you should be able to cite studies that writing things down improves memory of whatever is written. My personal experience on how I learn things goes contrary to this. For a long time, I thought I was the exception, but I am not so sure anymore. For example, taking notes during a class may actual inhibit learning, going contrary to conventional wisdom. I avoided taking notes so I can focus on the instructor and what they said. I would rely on the text book for additional reading and for study purposes. And/or I would get photocopies of someone elses notes if the text book did not fully cover topics discussed in class.
Some past thread on Soylent included a link to a video of a Harvard physics instructor who realized that note taking of students in class contributed to students not understanding basic physics concepts, even though they could compute the correct answers in test questions. They could follow the algorithms to solve a physics problem but failed grasp the underlying concepts. I wish I had the link to the video handy.
I personally think the act of reading is what helps in remembering things: anything that provides a visual image of the text that is to be recalled. It is the visual image of the words that help recollection, not the actual mechanics of writing that helps in recollection.