Justfindit.se Magazine

Technology or pen and paper

Technology or pen and paper. What method do you prefer and what method is the one that makes our work less or more valuable?

If we compare the present time with the time 20 years ago and before that, we can notice something interesting. We want to emphasize that we are writing about our way of learning. Let us present some facts. Nowadays when almost everything is doable on computers, smartphones and tablets, we actually use our fingers, keyboard and screen almost whole the time. Who uses a pen and paper instead?

20 years ago and before that time, people did not have same technology and tools as they have today. For writing, people used pen and paper and only in some situations keyboards. However, what we would like to mention here is that the learning quality probably differs considering the method of writing. If that is true, why is that so?

We have been following a person learning a language for a short period. It is about an online course which does not require a pen and paper at all. Everything is doable on a computer, smartphone or a tablet. Writing notices and exercises is possible online, in a PDF file and that’s it.

Passion, experience and value

On the other side, the passion for the course made this person go some extra miles. He did some own exercises where he actually used a pen and paper. He really wanted to do it as in good old times and he wrote down everything he needed for the practising and learning.

The experience was actually very positive. Using a pen for writing down something on a paper seems to create a special connection to what we are doing. It makes us engage more deeper in to it. Using a screen or a keyboard is more experienced as something ”let’s get rid of this”. That is for sure something that makes our work less valuable than the pen and paper method.

Doing the same thing as the person who we have been following did is maybe not usable in all situations when people learn something. It fits the situations where both writing and reading are required for learning. Learning a language is a good example because writing on the paper seems to affect the learning on a positive way.

For younger generations, on the other side, there is maybe a totally different point of view, especially if they almost never used paper and pen. That doesn’t stop them from testing though.