(I posted this comment in the other thread as well)

I banned all cellphones and computer-based note taking in the classroom, with the exception that students could use a device if they wrote with a stylus.

I get the cell phones, for most classes you won’t need to have it out aside from taking an occasional photo of diagrams.

However, I’ve always thought that it was silly to have this stance on computers. Not everyone has access to an iPad or nice Wacom device, nor stylus compatible software that matches their workflow / note-taking style. I tried a lot of them and never found one I liked.

The article cites that same decade-old paper, which suggests that handwritten notes have better retention. If you actually look at the paper, here is the design of the commonly cited study:

Students generally participated 2 at a time, though some completed the study alone. The room was preset with either laptops or notebooks, according to condition. Lectures were projected onto a screen at the front of the room. Participants were instructed to use their normal classroom note-taking strategy, because experimenters were interested in how information was actually recorded in class lectures. The experimenter left the room while the lecture played.

Next, participants were taken to a lab; they completed two 5-min distractor tasks and engaged in a taxing working memory task (viz., a reading span task; […]). At this point, approxi- mately 30 min had elapsed since the end of the lecture. Finally, participants responded to both factual-recall questions (e.g., “Approximately how many years ago did the Indus civilization exist?”) and conceptual-application questions (e.g., “How do Japan and Sweden differ in their approaches to equality within their societies?”) about the lecture and completed demographic measures.

The advantage of typed notes is being able to reformat the notes over time and to go back and fill in details after class. If students don’t get the opportunity to do that, then yes it makes sense that the more cognitively demanding method of taking notes would give better recall.

This also depends a lot on the type of course being taught, which I didn’t see when I skimmed the NYT article:

I’ve taught the same course to a class of undergraduate, M.B.A., medical and nursing students every year for over a decade

What’s true is that laptops can be distracting to other students around you if you are doing something else (ex. watching sports / e-sports was common). If profs want to reduce that without policing what people are doing in class, having a “laptop section” in a back corner of the classroom works nicely

The article is actually discussing a feasibility study for the far future (25 years from now as per the article):

For the first time, researchers from King’s College London have assessed the possible impact that generating solar energy in space could have for Europe. They found it could cut energy battery storage needs by more than two-thirds.

The study, published in Joule, analysed the potential of a design by NASA for solar generation, which is planned to be in use by 2050. The findings show the design could also save money by reducing the cost of the whole power system in Europe by up to 15%, including energy generation, storage and network infrastructure costs – an estimated saving of 35.9 billion euros per year.

Space-based solar power generation involves in-space continuous collection of solar energy. This involves placing large solar panels on satellites in orbit, where they are exposed to much more sunlight and can continuously collect energy without being affected by clouds or the day-night cycle. This energy would then be transmitted to one or more stations on Earth. It is then converted to electricity and delivered to the energy grid or batteries for storage.

It’s a cool idea and I’d imagine we’d need an array spanning the globe rather than just over one continent