Studies show that students learn better when they take notes by hand. As a professor at Dartmouth has observed, “The act of typing effectively turns the note-taker into a transcription zombie, while the imperfect recordings of the pencil-pusher reflect and excite a process of integration, creating more textured and effective modes of recall.”
Addendum (7/22/2015): Kudos to a friend for pointing out that the New Yorker article is founded on a 2003 study. “What kind of intellectual bases a technological claim on a study built on 12-year-old technology?” he says. “There’s a case to be made for dumping laptops, but as of now it appears to me to be a matter of preference, not empiricism. Non-producing academics need something provocative to fight about so they can feel alive.”
