Elaborative encoding

Why are kids in schools asked to write down what the teacher is saying?

We are in the age of personal computing, so this particular question might seem pretty stupid to you. Why do we have to use pen and paper to transcribe what the teacher is saying? My phone probably has access to hundreds of apps that can to speech-to-text for free, in a way that’s faster and more precise than I ever could. Are teachers stuck in the 19th century, trying to torture people for their pleasure?

Turns out that - as with most things in life - there is a deeper meaning to it: elaborative encoding. As Wikipedia very well defines it, elaborative encoding is a mnemonic that relates to-be-remembered information to pre-existing memories and knowledge.[1] One can make such connections visually, spatially, semantically or acoustically. Practitioners use multiple techniques, such as the method of loci, the link system, the peg-word method, PAO (person, action, object), etc., to store information in long-term memory and to make it easier to recall this information in the future.

Or TL;DR: the more elaboration you put into a thought, the easier it is for you to remember it later. Consciously writing or verbally repeating stuff makes it easier for your brain to remember it than if you just read it, because there is elaboration in articulating words and thoughts. Or if you want to take it a step further, make it a song.

The purpose of this blog (and the reason it has such a pedantic name) is exactly that: to help me remember stuff that I did in the past - even though using a computer is not the best way - and while I’m at it, to be able to share the knowledge with people.

So yea, your primary school teacher wasn’t just a jerk. Or maybe s/he was, but not when asking you to take notes. Welcome to my blog!