Students sat silently at their desks as social studies teacher Jeff Kallay gave his lecture for the day. Hidden by a screen that perfectly covered a student’s actions, there are countless video games and social media platforms at arms reach.

“When teenagers are on a Chromebook, they are two buttons away from things that they find a lot more interesting than me,” said Kallay. “I feel a little bit like I am putting kids in front of a candy store and saying, ‘Please only eat the carrots.’”

Because of this technology misuse, teachers such as Kallay have implemented a new rule in their classrooms that only allows students to handwrite notes during class instead of type them, with accommodations made for students when appropriate.

Kallay said he has enforced this rule in all of his classes, including three regular U.S. History classes, one AP U.S. History class and one Civics class.

Senior Michael Shen said there are time he has not used his Chromebook appropriately during class. As a junior, Shen watched March Madness on his Chromebook instead of writing notes as prompted by his teacher.

“[Students] have a lot of time combined with internet, games, sports and lots of distractions, so they try to see what they can get away with,” Shen said.

Daniel Oppenheimer, professor of decision sciences and psychology at Carnegie Mellon University, said in an email exchange that when students handwrite notes, they learn material better.

“Students cannot handwrite fast enough to get down every word the teacher says,” said Oppenheimer. “As such, by handwriting, students are forced to record the content in their own words. The mental processing required to understand the concepts well enough to rephrase them in your own words supports learning.”

Shen said the rule prohibiting typed notes in his AP Psychology, AP Statistics and Honors Contemporary Social Themes classess are not always helpful because typing is much faster and crisp, compared to his sometimes illegible handwriting.

Oppenheimer said there are also disadvantages to handwriting notes, such as students not being able to read their own writing, losing paper notes, cramped hands and handwritten notes being less complete records of what was said. 

According to Kallay, handwriting notes is also beneficial in improving overall performance in the classroom.

“I don’t really like to think of learning as exam scores, but my belief is that handwriting notes will help the learning, and learning will take care of the exam scores,” Kallay said.

Oppenheimer said, “The question shouldn’t be which is better, handwriting or typing, but rather which is better for a particular purpose.”