“Notes don’t lead to learning.”
It was a common statement in my classroom. I encouraged students to take notes, the more the better, but I always tried to be clear that notes and summaries don’t create learning.
Only one thing creates learning – choosing to do the hard work of understanding. And that doesn’t happen with scrolling and sound bites and summaries.
Notes can help you pass the test and even sound like you’ve done the work. Anyone who ever used Cliffs Notes knows you can skate past the book report without really knowing what’s in the book.
It’s easy to lament, to say all the scrolling is leading us down a dark path. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
I told my students to take notes because, used properly, notes CAN HELP In the process of understanding. And since I always want to talk about THE FREEDOM TOUR, let’s take human trafficking as an example.
You’re reading these words on some sort of screen. Behind that screen, right in front of you, is the power to access every bit of information about the issue of human trafficking. You can find endless articles, stories, and statistics.
Some folks will look away because they’re distracted by the next shiny thing, or because human trafficking is just too horrible and they just don’t want to know. Or because they don’t know what to believe.
But you can choose, if you wish, to go beyond scrolling. To understand. To learn.
That won’t happen by checking items off a list.
By definition, learning involves some sort of behavior change.
Notes, summaries, skimming, sound bites…they’re like skipping across the surface. When we choose to dig deeper, we might find something worth understanding.
And we might use that understanding to do something different.