Doubek's Attention, Students: Put Your Laptops Away

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As a student in the modern era, where technology is at an all-time high everywhere I look technology is being introduced into a teachers curriculum. Technology in school although once banned it is now being praised to have technology intertwined with a school lesson. Everywhere I look people are giving up old habits such as keeping a planner because your phone now offers a new way to be organized in an easier and faster manner. One habit that students are giving up with this technological surge is taking notes by hand. Personally, I have at one point tried to take notes on my laptop or even studying pre-written notes, I found myself distracted with such easy access to the internet. Consequently, I found my grades have become lower due to me …show more content…

Doubek states there is two hypotheses on why note taking is beneficial, the first known as, encoding hypothesis tells us when a person is writing notes the mental processing allows us to learn and retain information better. The second known as the external-storage hypothesis tells is that you learn by looking back at yours or others notes. Doubek also states that there are two types of note-taking: generative and nongenerative. Generative note taking occurs when there is summarizing, paraphrasing or concept mapping while nongenerative involves copying notes verbatim. Doubek uses a study published by Pam A. Mueller of Princeton University and Daniel M. Oppenheimer of the University of California, Los Angeles, to prove his claim. The study shows that students that use laptops, write notes verbatim, which does not allow the student to process information as much as the students writing notes longhand and longhand notes also have superior external storage and encoding

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