My high school has moved to a STEM program (it’ll probably become STEAM with “A” being arts) for two reasons. The first being the job market (I recently heard the same reasoning for STEM programs in my city’s public school system) and, the second, that it’s believed that it will increase critical thinking and problem solving within project based assignments. There’s a lot of talk from the president of the high school on how great it is, and I don’t doubt that it has its benefits, but given how my high school is presenting it the curriculum seems so one sided that any parents looking for a balanced curriculum would just smile, walk away, and search elsewhere.

Laptop note taking for STEM classes is useless, as the various equations and diagrams used in STEM lectures are much easier to write by hand.

Regarding auditory versus visual learning, note taking for STEM classes was rather easy, as it generally consisted of writing down what the professor put in the chalkboard. Like Neo, I am not a pure auditory learner, so don’t react so well to pure talkers.

When I went back to school for a second career in my 40s, I encountered some STEM profs who wrote very little down, expecting the student to pluck the equation of out mid-air, as it were. There was a math prof who sped through the lecture, writing down on the board much less than the average math prof. Ten to fifteen minutes before the class ended, he finished the lecture to open up for questions. My unspoken response was that had the prof written all the important stuff down, there wouldn’t be so many questions. Rest assured that I didn’t enroll in those STEM classes with more talk than chalk. 🙂

Regarding not understanding a STEM lecture the first time, my experience was that if I was being exposed to the material the first time, I didn’t really understand it. I needed to go over the material after class- lecture notes and problems.

I am reminded of a Thermo prof who was very curt to students who went to his office with questions. “What’s the matter, you didn’t go over my lectures?” His lectures were impeccably organized. The prof was correct: if you went over his lecture notes after class, they would sink in a lot better.

But in support of digital stuff, I found writing much easier on a computer screen than I did on paper. Spelling/typographical errors were much easier to correct on a computer screen than on a piece of typing paper.

In comparing writing on a computer screen versus handwriting, I came to the same conclusion. Part of the issue was that from elementary school on teachers had complained about my handwriting. What few pieces I later saw of my elementary school writing showed many examples of erased words- which were most likely attempts to make the handwriting more legible. Which made writing a pain.

Ironically, in recent years, I have gotten a number of compliments on the appearance of my handwriting. Rest assured I have made no attempts to make my handwriting more legible, which makes those compliments a surprise to me.

Neo’s point about writing poetry is well taken. Poetry is slow. Best to write by hand.

I had never seen the Cornell note-taking procedure. That reminds me of a comment a friend made while sitting in on a Statics class with me. While I was taking notes, making sure that all that was on the board was in my notebook, my friend pointed out that I was also doodling. Mostly geometric designs. As if my hand had to be doing something all the time.

In this course Yusupov explicitly demands the student refrain from computers in any form and do all work by hand — that is with a real chessboard and real chess pieces and a real pen/pencil and paper.

I figured if they really had good stuff to say, why didn’t they write it down, xerox it, hand the pages out in class and save me 45 minutes or so of trouble.

Last week I finished the online MIT Calculus I course. I took scrupulous notes Cornell-style and it made a difference. I didn’t review the notes as often as I should have, but I did review them and they were coherent, cognitive boosts.

Here’s “The Cornell Note-taking System” from the horse’s mouth, i.e. Cornell U., not Vanderleun’s website.

http://lsc.cornell.edu/study-skills/cornell-note-taking-system/

Isaac Asimov predicted where this electronic dependence would lead eventually:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feeling_of_Power

My grammar school adopted “new math” when I was there, and that’s the way I learned everything, up through Algebra. My folks hated it, but it was a good fit for me. Rather than drilling tables we were taught concepts.
* * *
I never understood why teachers couldn’t just do both: memorize what needs instant recall (times tables) and learn the concepts that make it work.
My oldest son was much like you – he worked very slowly but correctly, and the teacher discovered that he was deriving his multiplication products instead of memorizing them. He does arcane system processing these days.

Tom Lehrer had the last word on New Math, of course.
I used to sing ithis to my students when we studied base 8 and base 2, but some of them were worried that they couldn’t take notes fast enough and wanted to know if it would be on the quiz. Sigh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIKGV2cTgqA

I very much dislike lectures that simply regurgitate the text, and tried not to do that as a teacher (computer programming), but tried to expand on the important points or add current information not in the text, or insights from actually writing programs.

At some point you realize most of the class isn’t reading the text anyway.