With all of the technology available, students yearn to type their notes rather than write them.

College students are able to type and record lectures using laptops, and students at Monte Vista want this benefit too.  Students at Carondelet and De La Salle have this option, but it is mostly looked down upon at MV.

Typing notes is easy and more efficient for students, as well as more accessible. Students would be able to quickly copy down what the teacher is saying, or quickly look up things for more information.

However, with all these advantages that come from technology, the main reason for taking notes is being taken away: learning.

A study was done by two psychological scientists, Pam Mueller of Princeton and Daniel Oppenheimer, as well as a team of researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, to test this. Two groups of students were given the same presentation for half an hour, and told to take notes. Half of the students were to take notes longhand, while the other half were to use the computer.

A test was given right after the presentation. The results were astounding.

The students who took notes by computer received significantly lower scores than their classmates who had written by hand.

Just to see if added time to study would change the results, this group of scientists conducted another experiment. This time, students were given a lecture and then had a week to study using only their notes, either written or typed.

The results were the same, the students who wrote by hand scoring much higher than the typers.

Because of this experiment, it has been revealed that despite the efficiency and helpfulness of typing, writing notes by hand is key to learning and understanding a subject.

When typing, students can just mindlessly type the notes word-for-word without really considering what they are typing. On the other hand, because writing notes takes so much longer, the student must process the information and decide what is the most important to write down.

Another benefit to writing notes by hand is to limit the potential of cheating. With a document, it is easy for kids to pass notes to another without any work. However, with hand-written assignments, it is much more difficult. This way students are more likely to take their own notes and not rely on others.

Finally, laptops provide a distraction to typers. The constant desire to check Twitter or surf the web is always there, and the possibility to do so in class would only increase.

There is so much technology around us today, but for me, the pen and paper will be my way of learning information.