We studied the research. The findings were clear. The researchers said that people who take notes in handwriting on paper have a higher retention of facts than people who take notes on a computer.

At the elementary school where I worked, we discussed the findings and explored what it meant for teaching and learning at the school.

Most people were interested in learning more. Not Maureen. She scoffed at the research. She was unable to consider that it had any merit.

Not long after our discussion about handwriting, Maureen volunteered to take notes at a staff meeting. She always took excellent notes on her laptop. She was super-efficient.

Within minutes of the meeting being adjourned, Maureen hit send and the notes arrived in everyone’s inbox. She had included everything discussed at the meeting, including all of the details for the Middle School Conference that was taking place at the school the next day. Since our school did not include middle school students, the logistics for the students attending the conference were slightly complicated.

In the morning, over one hundred students and adults from neighboring schools arrived on campus. It was strange to have so many huge kids heading for the school auditorium. As per the discussion at the staff meeting, we would keep the elementary and middle school students apart that day. The little kids would stay on the lower playground and the conference kids would stay on the upper playground.

There was harmony between the elementary and middle school students until mid-morning. Within minutes of all of the middle school kids going out for a morning break, there was a huge commotion on the upper playground.

Maureen had sent her kids to the upper playground, and they were shocked to find all of those big kids roaming around and climbing on their play structures.

Maureen found me and demanded to know why nobody told her about the middle school kids on campus and the change of plans for the playgrounds. She was particularly angry with me. She was yelling at me. It was all my fault that her kids were scared. She demanded that I go outside and tell the big kids to go somewhere else to play.

I ran outside and gathered up all of the little kids, and we all ran down to the lower playground. Actually, no one was scared. They were laughing and shouting, and they thought that the change of plans was fun.

Later that day, long after the conference ended and the big kids were gone, Maureen continued to insist that no one had told her about the conference, much less the change of plans for the playgrounds.

I encouraged her to look at the meeting notes from the day before. It wasn’t until she opened her computer and saw her own detailed notes about the conference logistics that she finally admitted that she had not been paying attention while she was typing up the minutes during the meeting the day before.