In Europe the students are sitting in lecture halls typing notes into their laptops but professors in my son's American university prohibit the use of computers in class. On that, it sounds like the American way is better. Who knows what those students are doing with those laptops? Youtube, Facebook, Icanhas.cheezburger? OTOH, writing notes by hand helps fix the information in the brain. I carry a notebook around all the time, and take notes during meetings and important conversations. I rarely look back at the notes, but I remember the important stuff because I wrote it down. You can't always carry a laptop, but you can *always* have a notebook.
My experience as well is that writing stuff down tends to hold it in memory better and that, perhaps not incidentally, is the argument the American professors advance in prohibiting laptops in the classroom.
My problem is that for lecture courses there should not even be a classroom, it should be done online and the professor should have his salary cut way back and collect royalties for the audio/video lecture viewed by the students on the Internet. If you are studying a liberal arts course it seems to me that memory is not the primary objective but reasoning is and I do not understand how memorizing a professor's lecture advantages the student over absorbing the material in written form. I can read faster than I can listen and I can re-read what I don't understand. In any event, I can replay that portion of the lecture that I think is important or that which I do not understand.
I have to cut this reply short, or I might lose my reputation for brevity.
