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The same goes for college. I've advised college students to leave their laptops in their dorm room. Take a spiral notebook to lecture, and a couple pens. Write

The same goes for college. I've advised college students to leave their laptops in their dorm room. Take a spiral notebook to lecture, and a couple pens. Write down everything the professor writes on the chalkboard. When studying, going over the notes, you'll hear the lecture again in your head. Of course, if the professor doesn't use a chalkboard, and does a slide presentation instead, that will make studying harder for you. The best presentation I ever gave was when the presenter didn't show up, and the conference asked for volunteers. I volunteered and gave an impromptu presentation using markers and the big whiteboard. The back-and-forth with the audience was very productive! Most conferences have no way to do this. I tried using an overhead projector and markers, but the conference people thought I was crazy. There was just too much expectation of a packaged slide presentation.

emil-lp 7mo ago
I'm teaching programming and algorithms at uni. Only blackboard.
- osmsucks 7mo ago
  In my university, probably because the CS department at the time was an underfunded offshoot of the faculty of Mathematics, we basically didn't have access to computers (and I didn't have a laptop of my own). We did almost everything on paper, even exams. I admit writing MIPS assembly on paper seemed strange to me at the time, but the effort you put in to put things black on white somehow made the knowledge stick into my mind more effectively. Some of that knowledge will stay with me forever, and I'm not sure the same could be said if I had taken "shortcuts".
  - WalterBright 7mo ago
    I used to write code in a spiral notebook when I didn't have access to a computer. It was also hard to code on a computer in those days when the output device was an ASR-33, or a screen was 24x80.
groby_b 7mo ago
> When studying, going over the notes, you'll hear the lecture again in your head. That is a) a BS claim and b) wouldn't be a feature, on average, given the quality of college lectures. It seems fairly clear that manual note taking help with learning, over using a computer, but overblown claims like this do more damage than good in convincing people to do the right thing.
- downut 7mo ago
  This is hilarious. This comment would imply that the people who got multiple degrees and were very successful through their careers (that would be everybody in my generation: we started in 1980) learning from lecturers scribbling with chalk on a blackboard, writing it all down with pen on paper, somehow had a less effective education than modern students using modern tools. Yeah, looks all around, remembers training youngs, no, I don't think so... Actually sometimes it was bad because people, but sometimes it was fucking awesome. I lectured undergrad mathematics at UF and ASU using chalk and a blackboard and to this day that was some of the most enjoyable experiences of my life. Especially for the upper division classes, my students paid attention. They asked questions. It was glorious.
  - groby_b 7mo ago
    That's not what I said. I'm absolutely supportive of using blackboards & paper and pen over computers. What I'm saying is that making unsubstantiated claims like "you'll hear the lecture again when you read it" is completely detrimental to making that point, because it's entirely unsubstantiated and doesn't make any relevant point you couldn't make in a well-supported way instead.
    - WalterBright 7mo ago
      The relevant part is it filled in the missing parts of my notes. The prof says more than what he writes.
      - downut 7mo ago
amuradbegovic 7mo ago
> Take a spiral notebook to lecture, and a couple pens. Write down everything the professor writes on the chalkboard. I'm a gen Z college student (born 2005) and this is pretty much what I do all the time. I attend most of the lectures, even if they are not very good and I take notes with a pen during each of them. Some people at my school see it as being subservient to the professors and wasting time, but for me it's about rebuilding my attention span, confidence and clarity of mind (besides internalizing the material far better). It made me a different person compared to who I was in hs and freshman year. It's so simple. Most of us don't have ADHD, we're simply addicted and we can fight it.
- WalterBright 7mo ago
  You're right!

emil-lp 7mo ago

I'm teaching programming and algorithms at uni. Only blackboard.

osmsucks 7mo ago
In my university, probably because the CS department at the time was an underfunded offshoot of the faculty of Mathematics, we basically didn't have access to computers (and I didn't have a laptop of my own). We did almost everything on paper, even exams. I admit writing MIPS assembly on paper seemed strange to me at the time, but the effort you put in to put things black on white somehow made the knowledge stick into my mind more effectively. Some of that knowledge will stay with me forever, and I'm not sure the same could be said if I had taken "shortcuts".
- WalterBright 7mo ago
  I used to write code in a spiral notebook when I didn't have access to a computer. It was also hard to code on a computer in those days when the output device was an ASR-33, or a screen was 24x80.

groby_b 7mo ago

> When studying, going over the notes, you'll hear the lecture again in your head. That is a) a BS claim and b) wouldn't be a feature, on average, given the quality of college lectures. It seems fairly clear that manual note taking help with learning, over using a computer, but overblown claims like this do more damage than good in convincing people to do the right thing.

downut 7mo ago
This is hilarious. This comment would imply that the people who got multiple degrees and were very successful through their careers (that would be everybody in my generation: we started in 1980) learning from lecturers scribbling with chalk on a blackboard, writing it all down with pen on paper, somehow had a less effective education than modern students using modern tools. Yeah, looks all around, remembers training youngs, no, I don't think so... Actually sometimes it was bad because people, but sometimes it was fucking awesome. I lectured undergrad mathematics at UF and ASU using chalk and a blackboard and to this day that was some of the most enjoyable experiences of my life. Especially for the upper division classes, my students paid attention. They asked questions. It was glorious.
- groby_b 7mo ago
  That's not what I said. I'm absolutely supportive of using blackboards & paper and pen over computers. What I'm saying is that making unsubstantiated claims like "you'll hear the lecture again when you read it" is completely detrimental to making that point, because it's entirely unsubstantiated and doesn't make any relevant point you couldn't make in a well-supported way instead.
  - WalterBright 7mo ago
    The relevant part is it filled in the missing parts of my notes. The prof says more than what he writes.
    - downut 7mo ago

amuradbegovic 7mo ago

> Take a spiral notebook to lecture, and a couple pens. Write down everything the professor writes on the chalkboard. I'm a gen Z college student (born 2005) and this is pretty much what I do all the time. I attend most of the lectures, even if they are not very good and I take notes with a pen during each of them. Some people at my school see it as being subservient to the professors and wasting time, but for me it's about rebuilding my attention span, confidence and clarity of mind (besides internalizing the material far better). It made me a different person compared to who I was in hs and freshman year. It's so simple. Most of us don't have ADHD, we're simply addicted and we can fight it.

WalterBright 7mo ago
You're right!