Remembering v Connecting

Sometimes I am challenged by teachers about the use of digital tools v paper/oldskool. Often they cite some research done where students were divided into those taking notes using a laptop and those using paper. After testing, those using paper remembered more. Well if remembering is the goal of all education then lets do some more research on this! If making deep connections with material or being able to think flexibly and transfer knowledge across subjects is more important, then this study proves nothing.

Surely what we do with the notes is way more important than how we got them? Do we ask students to reflect on them, summarise further, read other students notes?

While speaking of notes, I just don't get the writing-notes-on-a-board idea. Why wouldn't we get these out in digital form (handout/video/blog/Twitter/younameit)? I can't think of a more wasteful use of time with my maths class than writing notes on the board for the class to copy. What higher order thinking is going on there? If we want to shift ever so slightly towards a student-centered classroom then I think the best notes I could write down for my students are not half as good as the notes they write themselves.

George Couros nails it with this

What is important here is how you make your own connections for deep learning. Taking a picture is obviously much less time consuming (why would not just give the information over in the first place?) than writing notes, so with the extra time, the ability to do something with the information is where the powerful opportunities for learning happen. For example, taking this picture and writing a blog post on it, will help me more than simply retweeting the picture out in the first place. When I speak, I try to challenge people to create something with the information I have shared, whether it is write a blog post, reflection, podcast, video, or any other type of media. If they really want to process what I have shared, they will need to make their own connections, not the connections I have made for them.

Having easy access to the information is great, but what we do with it, is what really matters.