Annually, we go through the outrage cycle around laptop bans. Student Erynn Brook took to Twitter to speak about her own experience as a student with ADHD and how she uses her laptop. Here are some highlights:
I would read the entire thread (which, because technology can be awesome, is already a patch in a new Open Learner Patchbook), especially when she goes after “flipped” classrooms that are still just lectures. But the other side of this is how she has figured out how to learn, take notes, and use her laptop as a tool (personally, I’m more of a Candy Crush girl for a fidget, but I can see how 2048 would work, too). Back in MY day before we had laptops to engage with and use as learning tools, I was a pen clicker, a pencil chewer, and then a poetry writer (I wrote just about ALL my poems during lectures).
But it does bring up the important issue of if our students even know how to take notes effectively, particularly on devices. George wrote about this (looks at calendar, screams silently in head) almost two years ago. Recently, Mind/Shift published Digital Note Taking Strategies That Deepen Student Thinking. I love, in particular, the idea of multimodal notes (DOODLES FOR THE WIN - wait, that’s not what they meant). But we need to remember that it is a rare student who has effectively figured out how to take notes, and that we have to help them learn how to learn more effectively.
How do you help your students learn to take notes and learn?
[Photo is my desk. All the pictures of laptops on desks on Unsplash were too clean and neat and tidy.]