Keyboard or Pen wasn’t the Question

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.  Laozi, Chinese philosopher.

It isn’t often I tackle “prevailing wisdom,” but this is one of those moments. While Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer certainly created a catchy title, The Pen is Mightier than the Keyboard, they omitted an extremely important fact–that note taking is an art to be taught and practiced. Maggy McGloin, writing in the HarvardBusiness Review, is perpetuating the omission, and, since the Harvard Business Review carries a certain cachet, I’m prepared to begin my journey. Thanks to Alfie Kohn for giving me the courage to speak. I was a huge fan and ardent practitioner of assigning homework to middle school students. After reading and thinking about Kohn’s work, I no longer assign nightly homework, opting instead to allow my students time to pursue their own hobbies and interests. But, I digress.

Mueller and Oppenheimer discovered that students who take notes on laptops often engage in mindless transcription. I have no doubt this is true. Learning to take notes requires practice and frequent reminders from instructors, teachers, and coaches. Educators already know we need to teach how to highlight material in texts. Left to their own devices, younger students develop the habit of highlighting anything they don’t know. They often try using different colors of highlighters for different pieces of information. Students tell me they use blue for new vocabulary, yellow for new facts, pink for new dates, etc. While their texts are quite colorful at the end, students don’t really absorb material and have no clue how to use the highlighted passages to study for quizzes or tests. Sports coaches give near constant feedback to athletes beginning in middle school. High school and college coaches continue this practice. How many high school teachers or college professors review individual student notes prior to midterms or unit exams?

Learning to take notes requires the same focus and attention as learning to highlight text. Teachers use strategies such as the New AmericanLecture, Cornell Notes, and a host of others to help students learn how to take notes effectively. I find that I have to continually remind students to use organizers when taking notes. In middle school, I often give students organizers that have three bullets in each of four boxes. Students are instructed not to exceed three bullets.  Other times, I will use up to five bullets. The point is that students need note taking parameters. Left to their own devices, I agree with Mueller and Oppenheimer, students will mindlessly transcribe.

Part of my curriculum involves students taking notes while viewing videos. In order to reduce the temptation to transcribe the video, I send the students a link to a video transcript. They immediately understand they do not need to retype the transcript. It is available to them anytime they need it. Teaching note taking requires the same skills as teaching any other concept. Students need an introduction, opportunity to practice, and some form of feedback loop.

The question Mueller, Oppenheimer, and McGloin should have asked their college students is what note taking method they used and why they chose it. When I ask seventh graders this question, many reply they have no organized method, they just write bullets. I teach at least three methods of taking notes in my class. We begin with Cornell, outline, and mind mapping (mapping.)  I review which methods helped students and by the end of the year, I ask them to choose the method they have found the most helpful.

Students do not automatically remember these methods from year to year or class to class or even unit to unit within the same class. The temptation to revert to a new bullet for every note and mindlessly transcribe is often too great to resist. The reason note taking methods, even just longhand, work is that students have to mentally analyze and evaluate information prior to writing/typing it. Every teacher from middle school to university needs to instruct and remind students how to take useful notes.

Taking notes on a laptop is far more useful than longhand if taught and practiced correctly. Laptop notes can be annotated, tagged, re-used, shared with study groups, and, when cited correctly, become the basis for research articles, class papers, and essays. Electronic notes also encourage reorganizing, further research, etc., that both enhance and extend learning. Part of my teaching note taking methods involves students coming to class with at least three questions generated from their notes. These become the basis for a quick review/discussion. Muller’s and Oppenheimer’s study do not indicate any follow up other than a quiz.

Longhand notes might work well in the short term, either for a unit or a single class. Electronic notes will last longer and be far more useful provided students are taught/reminded that there has to be a method to their note taking. Mindless transcription is not a method, just as mindless text highlighting is not actively reading. Students should be explicitly coached how to take notes and encouraged to use the methods they have learned.  Pam Mueller agrees and, in a follow up interview, concludes, “Ultimately, the take-home message is that people should be more aware of how they are choosing to take notes, both in terms of the medium and the strategy.”  The question isn’t pixel or pen. It is which note taking method will help me learn and retain this material?


Image sources:
Keyboard & Pen
Nifty Notes
What's so Simple about Note-Taking
Keyboard toolbox

Trip Planning Embed test

So, going to France seems like a good idea!

Revolutions! Wrap Up & Word Clouds

What have we been doing for the past 58 days?  65 students have completed 3382 assignments.  Why?  To practice time management, demonstrate the power of differentiation, but most of all to have fun learning about an exceedingly complex time in human history. The unit is Revolutions!  All the major revolutions from 1650-1920 are covered.  Students chose the order of project completion.  Each student was asked to complete 45 assignments, most opted to take on more.  Content?  Plenty of it including the Civil War, Industrial Revolution, Second Industrial Revolution, French Revolution, American Revolution, Enlightenment, and a wee bit of World War I.  Here are a couple of Civil War class poems.  Kids posted their poems to a Google Doc that magically became a Word Cloud.

MayaFrenchrev

horse to car

In the old days people used to get around by being pulled on in a carriage on by a horse. But that time has passed. Now there are cars, airplanes, trains, and boats. I wonder why all this stuff has changed? I think it is because now that people have come up with faster ways of travel people don't like ridging around on horses anymore.  Because it is cooler to have cars. People who own horses are considered farmers.

Steam locomotives

The first steam locomotive was Richard Trevithick's unnamed locomotive. it was ahead of its time though and never caught on. the stephenson's rocket, an engine made for the rainhill trials, set the format for all steam engines that followed it.

The biggest change after that to steam locomotives was when 2 sets of driving wheels were added meaning that it had 2 pairs of Pistons and was basically two locomotives that shared a boiler and crew. A example of this is the 4-8-8-4 "big boy" it had 4 front wheels, a set of 8 driving wheels, a set of 8 driving wheels, then 4 rear wheels.

The Passion of a Candy Maker

Candy has been here since the cavemen years where candy was just gooey honey, kind of like a taffy. In 2000 BC Egypt candy started becoming more advanced by adding fruit and nuts to honey. Although, you may ask how did we get from natural honey to factory made chocolate bars? Well it all started when a man named Cortez brought back a chocolate drink from Spain in the late 1700’s.

The Writer At Heart

So the big question is; how did I get interested in writing? What's so great about it?

As far as I can remember, I always loved to read. Around beginning grades of lower school, I was reading Magic Tree House books and such. By higher grades of lower school, I was reading Percy Jackson books. Now, I read sci-fi books like crazy. I do read other genres too though. I read the Reckoners series, Legend, Hunger Games, Throne of Glass, and so much more. I even did OBOB from 4-7 grade. Reading really inspired me to write. I though it would be fun to try to construct a story of my own.

From Horses To Cars

From Horses To Cars

I'm sure you have ridden in a Car before or definitely seen a car? Why did we change from horses to cars, planes, boats etc? When did we change? Transportation helped a civilization thrive and succeed.

Horses were used in up to the 18 century  to get to a destination from another destination

Moving

Moving

Jobs and new opportunities often lead to moving and change. I should know because for half my life I have lived in 3 states and moved 4 times. Having to adjust to the new environment and culture around me.

In 1820 the industrial revolution started and millions of people moved to big cities like Chicago or New York to seek new jobs and opportunities to support their family.

The Wright Brothers

The Wright Brothers had invented the first successful plane on December 17, 1903. An invention that was invented back in the 1900s has had greatly impacted our society today. Today, it has became a norm in our culture to just buy a plane ticket and take off to our destination. Sounds pretty simple....but it wasn't always like this. Before the airplane was invented transportation would take many hours to sometimes even days. People than had to travel by car, ship or train. If someone back then were to travel from Los Angeles to New York city that would approximately be 2400 miles. To travel by car it could easily take about 2-3 days. They would make many stops for gasoline and stay in a hotel or maybe even two before they could finally reach their destination. For a smaller situation like a car ride that would take 6 hours would take approximately only 1 hour to travel by plane. We rely on airplanes to take us where we want and when we want in a short period of time. These are just a few of many examples of how the airplane has impacted this world.

The Airplane allows us to travel for business trips, to visit relatives, and even just go on a nice peaceful vacation with family and friends. Many people including myself have had many complaints on how sometimes it can be a pain to sit in a plane for 6 hours straight but really in reality we don’t realize how lucky we are that we can sit in a plane and reach our destination within hours. During the industrial revolution it would take twice or sometimes even triple the amount of time. So, we can’t be the ones complaining! The airplane has positively affected us and is one of the reasons we can do some of the great things that we do today.

It is really easy for me to make a connection about this topic to my own life. Personally, I love to travel and visit new places. I enjoy visiting new places, and exploring many different things. I have got the great opportunity to fly to many great cities in the US and once even fly out of the country! I have visited San Jose and San Francisco in California a couple of times. Also I have once visited Seattle and even Toronto, Canada! Honestly, I find it very cool to visit new places, learn about different cultures, and meet new people!! Traveling is something for sure that I am very passionate about, and as I get older I really hope to travel to some of the greatest places that this world has to offer.

Sources: http://www.wright-brothers.org/Information_Desk/Just_the_Facts/Airplanes/Wright_Airplane_images/Model%20B/1910_Model%20B_flying.jpg
http://jonnycuddleberry.hubpages.com/hub/Smooth-Jazz-and-Relaxing-Music
http://www.wright-brothers.org/History_Wing/Wright_Story/Inventing_the_Airplane/Inventing_the_Airplane_Intro.htm
https://airandspace.si.edu/exhibitions/wright-brothers/online/fly/1903/
http://www.fusd.net/historyday/2001/Wright_Bros/culture.html

The Anglo-Zulu War

The Anglo-Zulu War

In the year of 1879, the British empire invaded the Zulu kingdom. They fought against Boers and Zulus. The British wanted to annex the Zulu kingdom but the Zulu leader, Cetshwayo kaMpande, had other ideas. The British numbered about 16,000 the first time they invaded and 25,000 the second time.The Zulus had about 35,000 soldiers. One day, a man named Sir Henry Bartle Frere presented the Zulus with an ultimatum, which resulted in war.

Glass

Cavemen used obsidian glass to make weapons and decorative objects. Manufacturing glass goes all the way back to Eastern Mesopotamia and Egypt in 3000 BC. Fragments of the oldest glass vases were found in Mesopotamia in the 16th century BC.

    In the beginning glass making took time and was costly. It was a luxury item only a few people could afford. The discovery of a new technique of making glass called “glass blowing” revolutionized glass making. Glass blowing is when you inflate molten glass with the help of a tube called a “blowpipe”. In its molten state glass is squishy and bendable so it can be manipulated into the desired shape. The molten glass is inflated in a bubble by being blown into by the blowpipe which is being controlled by a glassblower. When this method was first invented clay blowpipes were used. Today glass blowing is widely used. Although its main purpose is with decorative items.