Summarizing

It seems that "summarizing" has been dying a slow death since the introduction of "copy/paste". In my Library this morning, a student asked if he could use his ipad to take notes.

He read from the teacher's website and pecked some key points into his ipad. I thought it was a great way for him to read for importance, evaluate the information and then summarize in his own words. This could have been done faster with pen and paper - but this generation seems to lose paper easily and gadget love is a strong motivator.

I asked him about his research process and he said that he wants to put everything into his own words because it's embarrassing to be in front of the class during a presentation and not understand something that he put into his powerpoint. They don't explicitly practice "summarizing", but his teacher often calls them out on the meaning of words and concepts they have put into their projects. If they don't know; it's obvious that they just "cut/paste" the information.