[HN Gopher] Why I'm a sucker for pen and paper ___________________________________________________________________ Why I'm a sucker for pen and paper Author : pgcm1 Score : 133 points Date : 2021-03-26 20:05 UTC (2 hours ago) (HTM) web link (productivegrowth.substack.com) (TXT) w3m dump (productivegrowth.substack.com) | imwillofficial wrote: | I do the opposite of what this author does. Digital feels more at | home | whiddershins wrote: | _maybe_ | | It certainly seems plausible to me, in my personal experience, | but this article is talking about something that _may_ be true. | | This is another headline that is planting an idea in casual | reader's heads without explicitly mentioning it is in large part | anecdotal and speculative. | john-tells-all wrote: | Agree. I just passed a certificate by writing down all my study | material for the past three weeks. It's a lot, but the _act of | writing things down_ really helps cement info into my brain. | mrtksn wrote: | I find that it also helps me get over things. | | If there's something that I'm obsessing over or simply cannot get | off my mind, I can write it down and it will go away. Throwing | the piece of paper is optional. | | I think writing puts some kind of structure to your mental model, | you process it at the time of writing and can move on to the next | thing while preserving the output of the processing. The output | tends to be some kind of map about where you can find it and | short description about the nature of the thing you write down. | | It's almost as if you put the stuff of your "hot memory", the | memory that is about the main process you operate on, into your | visual memory. | | For some reason, typing on a computer doesn't have the same | effect. It does have some effect but it's different. | JohnCohorn wrote: | Current generations may perform better in various ways while | handwriting because we grew up being forced to write by hand for | many years while we were developing in childhood. I wonder if | upcoming generations that grow up typing instead will perform the | same way, or if they'll do better taking typewritten notes. | dagmx wrote: | I have a really hard time writing down notes while things are | going on. I have very good memory but if I'm taking notes while | something is happening, I often don't remember anything other | than writing it down. If I don't take notes, my memory of events, | topics and discussions is often far better. Writing things down | post facto also does not help me much, other than I know where I | wrote it. | | However I find the act of discussing a topic helps cement things. | For me, the engagement with a subject is what really helps me | remember things, and I suspect writing notes removes that. | anyfoo wrote: | In my case at least, I noticed that remembering things has a | strong "visual" component. I have nothing close to a photographic | memory (I wish), but for example in university, I often | remembered facts and formulas by also remembering where on a page | they were. I wouldn't quite "read it off" the page in my mind, | but just the visualization of the page helped getting to the | fact, in a "oh yeah, that's where that was written down" kind of | way. | | Today, I write down the most important dates and facts on pieces | of paper or a little notebook, and just the strong, vivid, very | visual recollection of me writing it down (and where) helps | tremendously in remembering what was written down. | krrrh wrote: | In university I used to take notes with lots of arrows between | concepts, while constantly switching between coloured pens, | sometimes with an explicit system in mind and sometimes more | intuitively. I noticed that this also greatly aided my spatial | memory and recall. | wealthyyy wrote: | Memorizing is root of all evil. Understanding is more important. | briandoll wrote: | This is one of the reasons I've started to use the reMarkable | tablet for taking notes. Sometimes I don't even look at them | again, it's just a more efficient way to get the info into my | head. | | I wrote more about my current workflow/stack here if anyone is | interested (w/ some reMarkable hacks): | https://briandoll.medium.com/personal-setup-for-getting-shit... | WalterBright wrote: | I take notes in a $.79 spiral paper notebook. When it fills up, | I just scan it and get another one. | SiVal wrote: | Can you recommend a quick, easy method for scanning all the | pages? | | I like paper notebooks, too. Someday, I'd like to have an app | that would let me turn any ordinary stack of scratch paper or | notebook into a searchable PDF in under 5 minutes. I would | finish a notebook and just put my phone on a gooseneck stand | and turn the pages one at a time (not riffle) at one page per | second or two, and it would know when to take the photos, | which it would flatten, orient, and bind into a PDF of the | notebook. It would maintain my handwritten pages but add an | OCR'ed backstore of the text that could be used to create | something like a table of contents, an index, and a fulltext | search. | | I imagine some portion of that is already available, and the | rest will be arriving anytime now. | WalterBright wrote: | > Can you recommend a quick, easy method for scanning all | the pages? | | The trick is to use a hopper fed scanner that scans both | sides at the same time. Not a flat bed scanner. | | I use an old Fujitsu fi-5120C scanner. | | I haven't found an OCR yet that will decipher handwriting. | I would think that with all the advances in AI this would | be an easy problem. | bumbada wrote: | I use different methods, but the most important one is an | old Fujitsu Snapscan automatic feeder scanner that scans | pages by both sides at the same time. | | I bought that in order to OCR books(destroying them cutting | them with a rotary disk saw) long time ago but I use it | today for digitalizing all my notes. | | If you don't care about destroying your notebooks, it is | the best solution. I did that with my University notebooks | because I needed to access them in work after University | and travel a lot so I don't want the bulkiness of carrying | around 20 kilos. | | No need to flatten, orient, color correct anything, tens of | pages per minute. | | Because of the scanner for my own notes I use single sheets | of paper and high quality aluminum clipboards and Staedtler | 432 M color pens that last for more than a year or intense | work. Way cheaper than a tablet with stylus. | | I digitalize old books today that need special care and | could not be destroyed, archival material like diaries from | wars. For that I use an array of cameras and a projector | and sophisticated software to flatten it. But that is | expensive and needs lots of work. | | If you are interested on that, just google DIY book | scanner, but I recommend the automatic feeder scanner if | you can. | ddevault wrote: | Likewise, but I don't bother scanning it. I just throw it | away and get another one off the pile. If it's important I'll | transcribe it in the moment, but it's almost never that | important. | WalterBright wrote: | When I was in college, I'd write code in spiral notebooks | (didn't have screen editors then). It's amusing to me to | see those today. | jscipione wrote: | Single subject notebooks got me through college. | briandoll wrote: | Absolutely. I did the same for a long time. I work with a | bunch of companies every year, and having notes organized by | client has been really helpful. That and a nice workflow to | send notes/sketches/ideas from the notebook to a client via | email is pretty nice. But definitely not for everybody. | echelon wrote: | Scanning sounds like a pain. | | eInk tablets are the future and confer all the advantages of | pen and paper. Perhaps they need to undergo a few more | generations of UI improvement, and the eInk company itself | needs to have its patents expire so the tech isn't held up, | but the experience is real. It's tactile, vibrant, and | smooth. Battery life is never an issue, even with wifi. | | The advantages of having notes always with you and being able | to organize into folders and move sheets and figures around | beats paper a thousand times over. Highlighting a figure, | dragging it to a better spot, rotating it to an affine angle | to give it life, and then resizing it to double size is an | earth shattering experience. | | Erasing, also, is finally a first class experience in a way | it can never be with paper. You can even re-sort lists of | items with ease. | | I'll never go back to pen and paper. | ravi-delia wrote: | Erasing and dragging are enough to make my reMarkable worth | it, but for random brainstorming I need real notebooks that | I actually keep on hand. Never been sure why, something | about having to physically locate my writing somewhere is | huge for me. | imroot wrote: | I carry both a reMarkable and a Rocketbook with me -- the | e-ink tablet makes taking notes super easy, but, the | rocketbook is great for sketching and coming up with arch | drawings and the like. | | I can quickly turn the RocketBook sketches into pdfs and | send them to the reMarkable for further processing...but, | I love the flexibility between the two, and honestly, the | reMarkable fits in the pocket off my RocketBook...so it's | not difficult to carry both. | | The more that I use reMarkable, the more I fall in love | with it, but, I wish I could find a way to make my own | templates. | amingilani wrote: | Did a search for Rocketbook and found this. Just wanted | to plug it in here, not paid or anything. | | I'm taking a college cryptography class, and I started by | maintaining notes with LaTeX in Markdown. It didn't help | much. The moment I started using a Rocketbook was when I | would _get_ things. I 've reused my book about 5 times | now in conjunction with work and other classes. I'm on my | sixth cycle and love it! | WalterBright wrote: | If it works for you, great. I've looked at those, and was | put off by the price, poor contrast, no color, and | fragility of the machine. | | If I need to take notes with me, I'll just snap a photo of | it with my phone. | | My notebook pages are often stained with coffee, and maybe | a bit of jam and butter :-) I don't worry about spilling | coffee on it, setting a hot mug on it, setting something | heavy on it, throwing it in the back of my car. I don't | worry about cleaning it (I once ruined an ipod by trying to | clean goop off it with an alcohol swab). | | Or maybe I'm just old and Led Zeppelin is still my favorite | band. | WalterBright wrote: | I found that out taking notes in college. It's pretty obvious :-) | ridaj wrote: | _Qui scribit bis legit_ | samuell wrote: | One aspect the article doesn't mention is spatiality, and how | that aids memorizing. | | As you might know one very common technique used by memorizing | masters is to place things you want to remember in some imagined | 3D world. | | This effect is also something I've experienced strongly myself | when listening to audiobooks while running. I figured I can | actually remember the exact place along my running route in a | nearby forest that I was listening to a particular passage in the | book - and vice versa - going back in memory to a particular | location immediately makes me start hearing memories from the | book passages I listened to in that location! | | I think this aspect is at play a lot with handwriting as well. | You are always writing in tangible places inside a notebook, | while when typing things on the computer there is less of an | immediate spatial location of each note. In any case that | location will both be mostly the same for all notes (you sitting | at the computer), and regarding any virtual spatiality of you | computer desktop system, that will have a less tangible | connection with your senses, (although any sense of spatiality | surely can help a bit). | bennysonething wrote: | I've been noticing this over last few years too. Replying a | podcast and I recall where I was at certain bits. | cameronh90 wrote: | During the pandemic, I have been listening to audiobooks while | I'm programming. I don't really listen to the content, it just | makes me feel less lonely. | | But what I've found is that I end up associating code I'm | writing to the audiobook I'm listening to at the time. Later | on, when I work on that bit of code again, I replay the | audiobook I was listening to when I wrote it, and it helps me | remember how that code works. | tzs wrote: | I suspect that this effect has something to do with why I can | search a book faster for some non-indexed thing I've previously | read in it if it is a physical book than I can if it is an | ebook. | | The physical book is 3D. As I progress through the book the | stack of pages on my left grows and the stack on my right | shrinks, giving a sense of moving through something physical. | And as I alternate pages I'm first looking to one side than the | other. | | And so when I'm later wanting to look up something, my memory | of that thing has associated with it a memory of the feel of | the book at that point and what side I was looking at, and that | gives me a sense of where to start looking. | MaxBarraclough wrote: | I find I can sometimes remember whether the content I'm after | was on the left or right page of the open book, which halves | the area to scan, but has no impact on the number of page- | turns needed. | [deleted] | fatnoah wrote: | Very interesting! In college, I strongly experienced the | phenomena of taking a test and not being able to remember the | exact content, but could accurately remember the layout of the | page that the data was on. | | I also got into the habit of creating 1 or 2 page cheat sheets | for tests, whether I could use them in the test or not, and the | spatial organization of the data seemed to correlate very | directly with my ability to process and absorb the data. | bradstewart wrote: | Really interesting to hear others had this experience as | well. During tests, I would routinely see an image of sorts | of the page in my head, with the words or equations I needed | blurred out. | | Now that I think about, no clue why I assumed that was unique | to me. | michaelrpeskin wrote: | Yes! Same thing for me. I'm a bit dyslexic so reading things | never goes well. But I could always remember where on the | page the equations were in the textbooks. So during a test, | I'd picture the equations and where they were and the write | them down so that I could use them. | samuell wrote: | Thanks! Interesting observation about the layout! | | Indeed, I also feel my most effective notes are the ones | where I get a little creative with the layout, placing things | out thoughtfully. | | (Also, going back and filling in with a lot of balloons with | thoughts afterwards etc, to make each page a little | customized). | CodeIsTheEnd wrote: | I had a similar experience in high school with Spanish | vocabulary tests. I could remember where the word was on the | page, but not the translation. | | At the time I perceived using the location as a crutch, so I | made photocopies of the pages, cut them into the separate | columns, then taped them together to make one very long and | skinny list of words. I would then roll it up into a small | scroll, little bigger than a tube of chapstick. Maybe the | spatial location was a learning aid, and this actually made | it harder to learn words, but it did make it much easier to | discreetly study during other classes, so it was probably a | net win overall. | lifeisstillgood wrote: | One outcome of that is vicious hier(5) wars - everyone has a | particular hierarchy of folders that "makes obvious sense" to | them, mostly I suspect because of spatiality. | | It would be like someone moving the rooms in your house. | beforeolives wrote: | > I figured I can actually remember the exact place along my | running route in a nearby forest that I was listening to a | particular passage in the book - and vice versa | | I've experienced the same thing. I sometimes relisten to | podcasts and specific lines in the podcast bring back the place | where I was physically when I heard the line for the first | time. Like "Oh I was walking down this part of that street | around 7pm 2 years ago when I heard this for the first time". I | don't think that I have experienced it in reverse though. | caddemon wrote: | That's pretty cool actually, I don't visualize things much | and I've only experienced it in the reverse direction, and | another commenter above mentioned something similar. Do you | feel you are more likely to visualize or internally verbalize | things (or perhaps both are relatively balanced)? | beforeolives wrote: | I can't visualise at all and I don't know if that's | aphantasia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia) or | that I perceive things in the same way as most people but | we use different words to describe what is happening. | anyfoo wrote: | Spatiality, that's it. It really seems to make a tremendous | difference for me to know _where_ something is written down, | and sometimes even remembering doing it. I always felt that | doing it on a computer was indeed too abstract, losing that | spatiality. | | I also agree with the audiobook thing. For example, I recently | thought back to a passage in an audiobook I enjoyed... and my | mind instantly visualized how I was standing in front of the | washing machine, doing laundry, while I listened to it. | | A weird thing though is that some concepts and topics in my | mind bring up images of locations that have nothing to do with | the topic itself, and as far as I can tell don't match up in | time. For example, one recent rather abstract concept is | associated with the parking lot of my old school seen from a | certain angle--many many years earlier. | | I imagine that in those cases I might have been thinking about | both the old school and the abstract concept at somewhat the | same time, and they got associated from then on. | slx26 wrote: | Though I think it's an even more general mechanism of | _association_. And places might also be easy to remember | because they also contain many elements we can associate. You | can call it the connectedness of a memory. You can also try | to repeatedly explain to others something you want to | remember or whatever. | samuell wrote: | Could be, but to me it seems our brains are optimized a lot | for operating in the spatio(temporal) world, and so spatial | connections in particular seem to fit the wiring of our | brains particularly well. | jfoutz wrote: | I wish I could find the reference, there's an old Roman | (Greek? likely older?) rhetorical trick to public speaking. | | The speech flows as you invite people to your home, and walk | them through it. So, the front door is like the greeting, | welcoming guests into your home. The picture in the front | room is the first point, the couch is the next point. the | dining room table is the next point. etc. | | practice the speech by looking at each item you select, and | mapping it to the point. | | It's pretty amazing. | | Everyone knows what their living space is like, and hopefully | it's a safe comfortable space. Anyone can talk for a long | time without notes. The memory of home is emotionally | calming. Inviting listeners in gives a warmth that's hard to | explain. | | I mean, rehearsing helps a lot too, but mapping talking | points to objects in the home is an amazing trick. | wombatmobile wrote: | Documented in The Art of Memory by Frances Yates | | https://books.google.com.au/books/about/The_Art_Of_Memory.h | t... | timcameron wrote: | I have heard the trick commonly referred to as 'memory | palace' or 'method of loci'. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci | heronalps wrote: | The seemingly "disconnection" between the concept and spatial | memory happens to me a lot either in day time or dream. Most | of the scenes occurred in my childhood, and I feel my | emotions, i.e. happiness, somber, anger, are associated with | them, which pop up when those feelings struck. | 1980phipsi wrote: | I have aphantasia (i.e. no visual imagination). It hadn't | occurred to me that people could use theirs to help them | memorize things... | tartoran wrote: | I think I have aphantasia to some degree and have experienced | what the OP is mentioning. Also handwriting is a good aid for | me to remember things, particularly if it is written by hand. | I don't need to review the notes but the act of putting it | down sticks a bit better. I will also have to add that my | memory is better at concepts and abstract things but not so | good at details. | caddemon wrote: | The handwriting thing makes sense, since I don't think | aphantasia necessarily affects motor memory. | Drawing/writing by hand could actually be more important | for people with aphantasia in that case, since it could | provide a motor memory that directly corresponds to | something visual. | | Also I think at the core of the "visualizing things in | different parts of space" memory trick is just making good | associations. If you're much better at verbal/internal | monologue type of thinking you could still do something | pretty similar, by mapping the things to memorize into a | story. | | Granted certain things are easier to map to a visual space | than to language, but that's true in the other direction | too. Anecdotally it takes a lot of effort for me to | visualize things and I barely do it naturally, but I seem | to have a much stronger internal monologue and a better | memory for things people say than most of my friends. I | wouldn't be surprised if poor visualizing abilities during | development could strengthen verbal reasoning a bit like | how blind people have other senses heightened. | | I really hope research into aphantasia will become more | commonplace, but a lot of it is speculation for now | unfortunately. | hypersoar wrote: | I have very little visual imagination and have experienced | the audiobook/running thing a lot, but only in one direction. | Running by the same place will often make me think of | something I heard there, but thinking about something I heard | doesn't bring back the place. | JshWright wrote: | Yeah, I am familiar with this technique, and have tried using | it in the past (as my "spatial" memory is very good, despite | a total lack of visual imagination), but I've never been | successful. | caddemon wrote: | Interesting, how do you experience spatial memories? Is it | somehow encoded verbally, or via somatosensation? Or does | it feel completely subconscious, like a Pavlovian reaction? | Or something else? | | I am bad at visualizing things from what I can subjectively | tell, but as far as memory is concerned it's mainly the | spatial memory tests where I perform poorly. So it's hard | for me to imagine what recalling spatial memories is like, | besides the assumption that people can probably visualize | them. | JshWright wrote: | It's kind of (but not exactly) like proprioception. Close | your eyes and hold your hand out. Even without visualing | (because we can't...), you know "where" it is. It feels a | lot like that. I just have a good sense of where things | are relative to me and each other. | sethammons wrote: | Key quote: | | > This cognitive effort of condensing and translating into your | own words is what facilitates learning. Which is why you could | still do this with typing, but it's easy to avoid the cognitive | effort of translating and condensing (and we tend toward | cognitive laziness) and just type it verbatim because you can | keep up. | | When I type notes (all the way back to college), it is in one | ear, out the other (onto the page). The act of physically writing | it down, and potentially a second pass to clean up the notes, is | almost all I ever need to get something into working memory. Back | in college, the third time I would look at my notes would be the | morning of the test where I would just glance through them. | Seeing the general shape of the text was often enough to trigger | the recall. | olivermarks wrote: | I find hand written lists are good for focusing, but if I'm in a | store hours later shopping for a group of disparate objects (10 | ft ladder, size 5 2.5 inch screws, plant pot etc etc) I find a | digital list invaluable because I can remove the items I have got | so far leaving a shorter list. I've found that unless I strike | out items I somehow miss something on a long list. I know you can | do this with a pen too but I've gone from wunderlist to the | various google phone list tools and find them v useful | bradstewart wrote: | Yea I actually draw little squares next to my todo items, and | then fill them in when I complete the task. For some reason, I | find that way easier to parse than a bunch of scratched out | words. | | I also do that in my engineering notebooks--it makes to-dos | stand out more from the rest of my notes. | olivermarks wrote: | Good idea, I'll remember that for the occasions when I do | have a pen & paper list! | Imnimo wrote: | >All of this makes me believe we need more time for our brains to | adapt to writing on glass, or technology needs to advance enough | so that writing on tablets feels like writing in a notebook. | | This strikes me as implausible. Did the earliest paper-writers | (or parchment writers) not get the same benefit because their | brains were adapted for cuneiform on clay tablets? | doliveira wrote: | I don't even ever read back what I wrote. But I find I need to | write down something to actually remember it. | | So it does fit with my experience. | jbverschoor wrote: | Our biology teacher told us to not bring the text book. He wrote | and drew everything on the blackboard, and we had to copy it by | writing it down. | | Never had to learn anythings, and I still remember 90% of it, | even visually. | | Remember that the great ones wrote a lot. | tombert wrote: | Bit of a life-hack I picked up awhile ago is to "write the notes | by hand, then type them out later". | | This has a few advantages. First, you basically get all the | benefits listed in this article. Second, you get the advantage of | repetition, and possibly correcting errors in your handwritten | notes. Last, you have pretty notes to read off of later if you | need to study for something, which is useful. | caddemon wrote: | Yeah I do this for anything that's both important and | complicated - it can be a slow process for me, but when typing | things up I'll usually end up further refining my thoughts and | coming up with new ideas, in addition to the benefits you | mentioned. | | Although my handwriting is also hilariously bad, so it's kind | of necessary for anything I anticipate needing to closely | review in the future. | gentleman11 wrote: | I disagree. Writing is helpful for thinking things through, but | the writing itself doesn't do anything. I used to take a lot of | notes to remember things and it can just act as an excuse to not | think hard. It's the hard thought and periodic review that | cements things | anyfoo wrote: | As I elaborated in another comment, not just the act of writing | things down, but the actual very visual recollection of how I | wrote it down and where on the page I did helps a lot. I don't | know why it works that way, but it definitely does. | _rpd wrote: | Yeah, the title should be "Handwriting helps particular kinds | of people remember particular kinds of things" | anyfoo wrote: | There was a somewhat recent astonishing revelation that a lot | of people are apparently unable to visualize things in their | mind (which was interesting to both groups in different ways | respectively), so I bet that if you don't visualize things in | your mind, it won't help much with recollection. | caddemon wrote: | I think it could depend a lot on how strong the person's | other modalities of memory/imagination are. Some people | commenting above mentioned they have good spatial memory | despite poor ability to visualize, but others are bad at | both of those. I could imagine handwriting having big | benefits over typing for someone that has a strong | sensorimotor memory for example, even if they can't | visualize much. | | Personally I don't have much visualization ability, and I | don't think note taking helps me at all in remembering | things that can be easily verbally encoded, for example a | history class. But taking notes in certain college math | courses seemed to make a big difference, even when I never | looked at them again. | | I'm not sure whether it's directly a memory thing (perhaps | drawing stuff by hand could subconsciously affect recall), | or that I use my own shitty drawings as a weak substitute | for visualization thereby making it easier for me to | conceptualize highly spatial topics. But in any event I | think the subject matter could also be a mediating factor. | | Tangentially related, but this is why I really appreciate | video recorded lectures, being able to pause for a few | minutes to work through or look up visual demonstrations is | so much more efficient than trying to go back and make | sense of everything afterwards. | ravi-delia wrote: | I think that Galton figured that one out at some point in | the 1800s, no? There's a huge amount of variation in how | precise your mind's eye is, from absolutely nothing to | vague impressions to photo-real images. | caddemon wrote: | IIRC it was dismissed by most people at the time though. | I've only started to hear it discussed by people in | psych/neuro academic departments in the last few years. | [deleted] | majormajor wrote: | I find typing perfectly adequate for _remembering_ things - in | school if I was copying out notes I did just as well typing as | handwritten, and could do it faster (and so get more repetition | in) on a computer. Both blew away just reading or listening | passively. | | However, for brainstorming or planning, which is a lot of what | this article is talking about, the unbounded spatial component of | paper (or a drawing app with stylus) is much better for me than | the constrained nature of a word processor. Something like | graphviz isn't bad for certain types of things, but anything that | relies on mouse-based selection and dragging of things breaks my | flow in a way that jotting a new note off to the edge of an open | paper doesn't. | igammarays wrote: | The Brain That Changes Itself. Life changing book. One of the | surprising studies there shows how kids with all kinds of | learning disabilities can be radically transformed just by being | given cursive handwriting exercises. Brain development and | activation under handwriting is measurable, and very different | from typing or even printing. | krrrh wrote: | One thing that stuck with me from that book was the notion that | the fine motor control gained through the rote learning of | handwriting might carry over into verbal fluency. iirc it was a | speculative point in the book, and I wonder if that has been | any research into it since then. It partly inspired me to | relearn cursive as an adult using the Getty-Dubay italic. | | https://handwritingsuccess.com/write-now/ | pgcm1 wrote: | Subscribe here: ProductiveGrowth.substack.com | abduhl wrote: | I think this post just barely misses the main reason which, in my | opinion, makes writing a better medium for remembering. They | mention that typing is faster and easier than writing but I think | the real reason this impacts memory is because you have to reduce | things into their smallest form in order to keep up (with the | person speaking or your own thoughts). This act of condensing | makes you internalize the words into concepts, and concepts are | easier to recall. | dave_sid wrote: | I handwrite my todo list at the start of everyday and scribble | notes down when I'm in meetings and almost never look at them | again. It definitely helps solidify things in my head for | whatever reason. I'm not uptight or anything, it just seems to | help me. | alex_c wrote: | This is me. I've tried various note taking apps but I never | stick with them for more than a few days. | | My notebook is everything. If I don't have it for any reason | (most often: it ran out and need to buy a new one) my | productivity actually takes a big hit. Basically: if I don't | write it down, I probably won't get it done. | pgcm1 wrote: | I never knew why I unconsciously chose analog over digital in | those cases, but it turns out there's a scientific explanation. | When we write, we make our brains go through an abstraction | process - separating something from a whole to analyze it by | itself.- According to neurologist Audrey Van Der Meer, "It seems | that keyboards and pens bring into play different underlying | neurological processes. This may not be surprising since | handwriting/drawing is a complex task that requires the | integration of various skills." | | I wrote a full article about it in the link above. | com2kid wrote: | Every time this topic comes up, I am curious to see a cross- | generational study. | | I'd also be interested in seeing the result of taking notes | with a less linear note taking tool, such as OneNote and its | infinite canvas, compared to pure linear note taking. | | Now for most math classes, and other subjects that involve lots | of diagrams, hand writing (digital or analog) is better! | (Ignoring the people who are so good at LaTeX they can do | complex math equations) | | IMHO the largest issue with modern teaching is the use of | slides. I was going to college just as the transition to | PowerPoint was happening, and wow was the degradation in | quality of teaching noticeable. | | One of my profs, whose class I had a low opinion of, used | slides for all his lectures. One day the projector broke down | and he had to teach on the chalk board. It was amazing! The | quality of his lecture improved dramatically when he was able | to go back and make changes to past diagrams, or change | examples on the fly to dive deeper into something the students | had difficulty grasping. | | The other problem with PowerPoint is that it goes by faster | than students can take notes! If the prof and the students are | both writing notes, they are on (mostly) equal ground, ignoring | that profs have decades of experience writing quickly. | krrrh wrote: | There was also the transitionary period where teachers and | profs would print slides onto transparencies and project | those onto a screen. The overhead projectors sometimes had a | roll of plastic that they could write on with a felt marker | either over the slides or as a blank canvas. A bit of | googling reveals that many primary schools still use these, | and not all have transitioned to "smart boards". | | It was a good trade off, and it's kind of surprising that the | rise of tablets and styluses hasn't seen this hybrid model | return. | asdff wrote: | In the 2010s my organic chemistry professor would use one | of those projectors and a sheet of blank printer paper, and | would just write out chemical formulas all class. We | basically all took notes together along with the professor | each lecture, which was great because that meant he could | never speed up too much since he had to spend time writing | everything down, too. Then everything would go up online | afterwards if you needed to refer to the professors notes | from that day. | mikestew wrote: | It's been over 15 years since I was scribbling on | PowerPoint slides while my Tablet PC was hooked to the | projector. I'll ask my spouse if her MS Surface supports | such functionality, because I found it pretty darned handy | at the time. | | I have little need for such a feature anymore, so I don't | know if an iPad Pro w/stylus can do that with Keynote (not | without looking it up). | BitwiseFool wrote: | My own experience in school lines up with what you described. | There's something about having to teach 'manually?' that | gives more energy to the lecture. | lightlyused wrote: | For me it does in a way, but I still need to read my notes while | the details are still fresh in my mind. The main reason is I'm a | sloppy writer and I might not be able to make out my mess if I | haven't reviewed it enough. Also, for small things like | passwords, saying them 10 times helps me get over 'what was that | again' hump. | metalliqaz wrote: | what the heck is "digital handwriting"? | reificator wrote: | Presumably using something like an active stylus on a tablet? | | https://www.trustedreviews.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/54/2... | [1]: ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-03-26 23:00 UTC)