Paper or Digital Note-Taking: Which One is Better?

It’s no secret that electronics in today’s life have so many impacts on our daily lives. One of the biggest impacts technology has is that it makes learning more convenient. There have been several discussions surrounding paper note-taking versus digital note-taking. Many people prefer to take notes by hand; however, others believe that taking notes digitally is a lot easier.
“Digital [note-taking] is faster now because everything is online. Actually, when we were in quarantine, it was so much easier to share that information with kids digitally.” Joylynn Boardman, an English teacher at Silver Creek, said. “We all have iPads so it’s pretty easy just to present digital notes.”
Boardman believes that students can benefit a lot from digital note-taking. It provides students with plenty of options that they can freely edit their own notes anywhere and anytime.
As a teacher, Boardman shared her view on how taking notes digitally affects students’ learning and said that she likes taking notes on paper more than electronic devices because the action between hand and brain is computing together.
“I think that oftentimes kids will just take a picture of the notes if it’s digital and not really think about it.” Boardman continued. “I believe that if you really want kids to commit something in memory, asking them to write by hand is the best.”
Josephine Nguyen is a junior at Creek. She explained that she enjoys taking paper notes more. However, she has to have enough time to do that since it requires more time than digital note-taking.
“I remember more when I take paper notes since I am taking more time to process and encode the information in my brain.” Nguyen said. “But the downside of this is that it takes longer.”
Digital note-taking can be more flexible if you want to do some projects or presentations. Due to the fact that it provides you with a variety of colors and features.
“It’s important to also know how to write notes digitally so maybe [using] digital note-taking to do presentations that take longer time to do on paper.” Paula Velasco Navarro, a junior at Silver Creek, said.
Navarro does believe that taking notes on electronic devices helps people to save a lot of time.
“If you really want to learn something and commit it to memory maybe take notes digitally but then when you study make sure you write it out by hand.” Boardman said.
Taking notes is a personal preference that everyone needs to make by their own consideration. Some people end up enjoying taking traditional notes. On the other hand, people learn the best when they take notes digitally. After all, it is all about what most benefits you.