We here at English Central are not anti-technology by any stretch of the imagination. We like to think that we take a mindful approach: use the best technology (be it an online study module or a pen and paper) to suit the situation and the aims. We do believe that there are a lot of educators and administrators who have lost their minds in that they seem to think that absolutely everything must be in the most digitized form possible in today’s education system. We will probably attack this from different angles in the coming months because this is a real pet peeve for us.
In the meantime, we thought we would point you to a new study coming out of the US that shows that students who use laptops to take notes typically score a half letter grade lower than their peers who favour the old pen and paper. Laptops are particularly draining on the brains of male and poorer performing students. There are no definite reasons offered for the negative influence of laptops, but “cyber-slacking” (a wonderful and self-descriptive term) is suggested as the most likely problem.