The Benefits of Note-Taking By Hand: BBC

[appalachiablue]

By Hetty Roessingh, University of Calgary, 10th September 2020. From Originally from the Conversation/ BBC WorkLife.

Computers and phones have become the go-to note-taking method for many. But your brain benefits from an old-fashioned pen and paper. Do you pick up any old notebook and pen when you need them, or do you have a thing for Moleskines or Montblancs?
Whether or not you’re picky, know that tools for the hands are tools for the brain. Handwritten notes are a powerful tool for encrypting embodied cognition and in turn supporting the brain’s capacity for retrieval of information. And secondly, when you take notes by hand, your hands create a robust external memory storage: your notebook. Taking notes by hand is a win-win, and belongs in every student’s cognitive tool kit. Learning how to take notes by hand effectively, and how to ingrain note-taking as a key learning and study tool, can begin as early as grades 3 or 4, but it’s never too late to begin.

We live in a digital age where daily functioning involves digital communication. Automaticity in keyboarding is an important skill too, and the tools and applications for digital communication will continue to evolve and have their place. But keyboarding does not provide the tactile feedback to the brain that contact between pencil or pen and paper does — the key to creating the neurocircuitry in the hand-brain complex.

The processing advantage

While your laptop might seem faster and more efficient, there are good reasons for having a paper-bound notebook and pen — any kind you prefer — at the ready. Researchers have found that note-taking associated with keyboarding involves taking notes verbatim in a way that does not involve processing information, and so have called this “non-generative” note-taking. By contrast, taking notes by hand involves cognitive engagement in summarising, paraphrasing, organising, concept and vocabulary mapping — in short, manipulating and transforming information that leads to deeper understanding.

Note-taking becomes note-making: an active involvement in making sense and meaning for later reflection, study or sharing of notes to compare understanding with lab partners or classmates. This becomes a potent study strategy, as one’s own processing can be further consolidated through talk...

More, https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200910-the-benefits-of-note-taking-by-hand



- Experts say taking notes by hand engages your brain in different ways, makes you interact with the material in different ways, and overall, deepens understanding.

[ms liberty]

1. KR&B. We're going to be going paperless in my office

Sometime within the year. I accept it, but I don't like it for a lot of these reasons. I'm going to send this to my boss when he gets back from vacation, lol.

[appalachiablue]

2. Everything's going this way, so fast. The article points

out important reasons for using and maintaining handwritten notes.

I'll never give it up, for me it's best for the brain, learning and retention.

Good luck with the boss.

[underpants]

3. ¿

I use the ¿ to tell myself I have a question a follow up.
I have lots of other little notes I use.

[lark]

4. Interesting, I find this to be true for learning a language as well.

My SIL is Brazilian and he & family speak Brazilian Portugese. I have been studying this thru DuoLingua and was having trouble when a bunch of new verbs were thrown at me - over 50 in a few days. At 68 my memory isn't nearly as good as it used to be and I was having trouble remembering them so I wrote them all down with their explanations and it really helped. Something about writing these out helped my brain retain the information much better. So now I'm at another section where I'm struggling so today I will sit down and write them all down and I bet it will help me remember which words to use for in that (male and female and plural) in this and on this and on that - it gets confusing because they have 3 different forms and we don't do that in English.

[eppur_se_muova]

5. I'll carry 3x5 cards in my shirt pocket 'til the day I day.

Probably some of the same ones I'm carrying now, admittedly.

The best thing about older technologies is that they work when both the network and power are out.

[forgotmylogin]

6. I have noticed that if I handwrite something I remember it more readily.

I expect it's the physicalization that carves the act into brain neurons differently. Typing is reflexive and automatic.

I can type-transcribe multiple pages of text quickly and barely register what the words are, but handwriting is slower and feels permanent.

This might just be me since I handwrite so infrequently; I know authors who do every initial draft on legal pads and would never change their process.

[murielm99]

7. People have different learning styles.

There are visual learners, auditory learners and tactile learners.

People who are tactile learners surely learn and remember better by taking handwritten notes.

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. A couple of years ago, I was on a (British) jury

No electronic note-taking allowed, and I found my own scrawl (at speed - you can never ask them to slow down, of course) was often illegible to me. But there was a woman on the jury who was used to handwriting notes at speed, and it was really helpful to everyone.