Taking Pictures or Taking Notes

In a class last December, I wrote some directions on the blackboard for students about

their final examination. One young girl quickly took a picture of the board using her smartphone. When I looked in her direction, she apologized, “Sorry. Was it wrong to take a picture?"

“I can't read my own handwriting," she explained. “It's best if I take a picture of your writing so I can understand the notes.”

Those words started a heated discussion about taking a picture instead of taking notes. Some took pictures of notes because they knew their phone was a safe place to store material. They might lose paper, they thought, but they wouldn’t lose their phones. Some took photos because they wanted to record exactly what had been written on the blackboard. Others told me that during class, they would like to listen to the discussion attentively(专心地). Taking notes would district (使分心) them from important information.

It may be convenient to use cameras as note takers. Yet it does raise some questions about the classroom. Is a picture an effective replacement for the process of note-taking?

Teachers encourage students to take notes because the act of doing so is more than merely recording necessary information. It helps prepare the way of understanding. Encouraging students to take notes seems to be an old-fashioned (过时的) teaching method. But a method with a long history doesn't mean it's out of date. Writing

things down makes a student's brain take an active part in class, according to a study. The act of writing down information enables a person to begin keeping it in mind, and to process （处理）and combine（融合） it.

Taking a picture does record the information. However, it deletes some of the necessary mental involvement （参与）that note-taking is rich in. So can the two be equally effective?