In the digital age, longhand notes have been replaced in favor of notes taken on a laptop. Ten years ago, this would not have been possible, but laptops have slimmed down, making them easy to transport in a backpack. They have opened up new areas where students can more easily become involved.

Collaboration with peers on papers and projects is one example. It is also easier to access the enormous amount of information available on the internet, and have made it so that the student can take more notes in a shorter amount of time allowing for verbatim notes. A student can type faster than they can write which is one appeal to taking notes on the laptop. In theory, these reasons enhance the students’ learning abilities.

However, there are problems with this model of note-taking.

The ability to take notes verbatim or word for word means that students do not have to comprehend the material at that moment. They can wait until later to completely understand and delve into their subjects. But many students do not complete this later step and never truly grasp the material. Another problem is that many students enter a mindless state while taking notes verbatim.

This is in comparison to taking longhand notes where students are forced to summarize the information presented to them because the slow nature of the longhand form does not allow for verbatim notes. Through the process of summarization, the students must digest and understand the material which then leads to a longer retention and deeper understanding of the information.

Another issue of taking notes on the laptop is access to the internet. Most of the information that students are learning can be found on the internet. This makes it seem that during lectures, note taking is not as important because the information can be found later. But students do not follow through and miss out on valuable information.

The internet also increases the chance of distraction for a student. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other social media sites are becoming increasingly important in our society. Users are becoming more and more interested in being involved in these sites constantly. Unfortunately, these serve as distractions during lectures.

Students in class are always clicking and typing away on their laptops. The teacher is lecturing in front of the class. But many students may not actually be paying any attention to the lecture. At their fingertips is an enormous amount of entertainment that has nothing to do with the class they are taking. There is always a student checking the latest tweet on Twitter or taking the newest Buzzfeed quiz rather than taking notes in class.

Torey is a junior in FAA.

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