Saturday, November 30, 2013
How should students take notes in a Math class?
As I was reading through many of my classmates' blog posts, I realized that many of them touched upon the issue of taking notes with technology, and using eBooks or actual books. I would like to comment on the issue of taking notes with technology, either by typing everything on a computer or taking a picture and saving it in their phone. I am not against the idea of taking notes with a computer, but for Math, I believe that students shall actually write down notes with a pen or pencil. I type on my computer to take notes for many classes all the time, but I feel like it is much more effective and easier to actual write down notes with a pencil than trying to figure out how to type sigma in a word document. For math, there are many symbols and notations that you can't really "type." You have to click several tabs in Microsoft Word to insert a Greek symbol or square root, and that often takes too much time. It defeats the purpose of taking notes with a computer if students are wasting time on figuring out how to type all these math notations. Therefore, I believe that students shall not take notes with a computer in a Math classroom. The traditional note-taking is much more effective. In addition, students will be able to retain more information and remember the content better if they actually write the notes. I find that true all the time at my fieldwork site. Whenever my cooperating teacher asked students about an example that they had done before, the students always said something like "oh, I remembered I wrote that down somewhere in my notebook," and they would start flipping through their notebook and know exactly where to find it. As a result, I will strongly encourage my future students to take notes using a pen or pencil.
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Sharon, I completely agree with everything you said, but I also believe that there are some solutions to the things that you disagreed one. Some high schools allow students to use laptops for every class and when I first thought about this, I thought it was a terrible idea for math. My first thought was that students would spend more time looking for the math symbols than they would be learning. Then I thought about the technology that is currently out and most laptops that are coming out now are touch screen. This would mean that the students would still be able to take notes for other classes on their laptops, and take math notes by “writing” them on their laptop using the touch screen option with a stylus. Math has become a little more technology friendly than it has been in the past years, so I think that students could take math notes with the use of the correct technology.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you, note taking in a math class should be done with paper and pencil. I think this because in math you are always working out different examples which require many steps and you may have to erase and try again. You cannot solve problems by trying out the steps on a computer. In other subjects such as history I think typed notes would work because that is more factual and opinion based, rather than trial and error. I do think its acceptable to take picture or the homework problems but besides that everything else should be done on paper.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your points. I think its better for students to learn from writing out the problems and figuring out the answers by writing them down with paper and pencil. One thing for sure, using technology isn't that great; staring down the problems on computer will get students distracted with going on other site such as facebook. Also typing out the notes can distract other students. I think in math, its better for students to solve on paper, because they have more opportunities to erase and start over again, however computers you cannot solve it, by writing out, all you can do is to give an answer to the problem, which I don't think its engaging for students to learn.
ReplyDeleteLuckily, during my time at MSU I haven't needed to take a math class! However, I always struggled in school with my math. Never to an extreme, but studying was always an issue. I agree that paper and pencil or "traditional" is the best way to study. To sit down with your brain and work out math problems is the best way to ingrain the knowledge into your head. Using technology I don't think is the best way. I know many people who attend this university who have their math classes online and their tests were all online, they couldn't use pen and paper. To me that is appalling.
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