Miranda is a technical writer and product lead at VMware as well as founder of Books on Code, which is a platform for programmers who love to learn through technical books.
Location
San Francisco, CA
Education
MA English Literature
Work
Senior Technical Writer at VMware (previously Pivotal)
There is science to back up the hand-taking notes helps you learn better. Hand writing is slower and requires more effort than typing, and somehow using a part of your mind for a more effortful task (like shaping a letter or a drawing) helps your retention immensely.
It should not be considered old school. It's just good study practice.
Very true Miranda! This hit the headlines in 2014, with Muller & Oppenheimer’s paper, 'The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard…'. Laptop note-takers could take notes faster so had the ability to transcribe lectures verbatim rather than the longhand notetakers who had to think about the information they are given and rephrasing it in a shorter more concise form.
However, all these studies focused on traditional long form note-taking applications, which made it easy to quickly regurgitate what you are learning without thinking about it. One thing that excites me at the moment is the wave of new note-taking / knowledge based applications which are applying the science and behaviour of learning to a digital environment. I'm building one of these such applications and we have done a lot of research into creating a format suited to knowledge retention – our platform is based around short-form note-cards rather than long-form documents. This helps our users to break down their information into more thoughtful pieces – not dissimilar to a Zettelkästen system.
Having said this, I definitely recognise that studying is a very personal experience and not always a science – some methods work for some and not others. Whatever works best for you, is the one you should continue to use.
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There is science to back up the hand-taking notes helps you learn better. Hand writing is slower and requires more effort than typing, and somehow using a part of your mind for a more effortful task (like shaping a letter or a drawing) helps your retention immensely.
It should not be considered old school. It's just good study practice.
Very true Miranda! This hit the headlines in 2014, with Muller & Oppenheimer’s paper, 'The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard…'. Laptop note-takers could take notes faster so had the ability to transcribe lectures verbatim rather than the longhand notetakers who had to think about the information they are given and rephrasing it in a shorter more concise form.
However, all these studies focused on traditional long form note-taking applications, which made it easy to quickly regurgitate what you are learning without thinking about it. One thing that excites me at the moment is the wave of new note-taking / knowledge based applications which are applying the science and behaviour of learning to a digital environment. I'm building one of these such applications and we have done a lot of research into creating a format suited to knowledge retention – our platform is based around short-form note-cards rather than long-form documents. This helps our users to break down their information into more thoughtful pieces – not dissimilar to a Zettelkästen system.
Having said this, I definitely recognise that studying is a very personal experience and not always a science – some methods work for some and not others. Whatever works best for you, is the one you should continue to use.