Picture a university; rows of classmates in lecture theatres, each with their own laptop, frenetically taking notes as lecturers offer up their wisdom. Gone are the days of frayed notebooks and cheap, chewed-up pens. But before the humble pen is bid goodbye, it’s important to pause and consider if it still has a role to play in today’s technology based learning environment?
Since its inception, the pen has allowed some of human kind’s most creative minds – from William Shakespeare to Leonardo da Vinci – to contribute their best, to spread their brilliance and to leave a legacy. We must not forget that the pen itself was once a technological marvel to Ancient Egyptians writing on papyrus and, even over thousands of years, it has endured. And it continues to play a role today, albeit increasingly in a digital context.
The results found that when writing or drawing by hand, different parts of the brain were active and in different ways. This pioneering research provided the first electrophysiological evidence that the brain behaves differently when writing or drawing using a pen compared with typing on a keyboard.
The researchers conclude that rich sensory-motor experiences seem to facilitate learning, or put simply, it is the physical movement of the pen that makes the difference. The movement is picked up by the senses and, due to their involvement, results in different neural activity that governs all higher levels of cognitive processing and learning.
“This difference in activity is really significant, it tells us that using a pen to take notes means that the brain is able to process learning in a much more effective way.”
