New information suggests that longhand may be a better tool for locking in learning and help us remember what we heard. UCLA researchers had students take notes at a lecture and quizzed them later. Even with the Internet disabled, long-hand note-takers performed better on tests. Mueller/Oppenheimer referred to the “desirable difficulty” —when an obstacle that can frustrate us, actually helps us learn. Students who were transcribing the lectures were acting as stenographers an

Short-term memory acts as a kind of “scratch-pad” for temporary recall of the information which is being processed at any point in time, and has been referred to as the brain’s “Post-it” note. It can be thought of as the ability to remember and process information at the same time. It holds a small amount, typically around 7 items or less, in an active, readily-available state for a short period of time and starts to empty out in 10-15 seconds! So, if we cannot retain informa