It’s no secret that screens have dominated students’ lives both at home and in the classroom. In the world of education, technology has truly transformed what teachers can do. Teachers can differentiate assignments quickly, providing more accommodation and accessibility features than ever before. Students can now access thousands of texts instantly, receive immediate feedback, and share assignments with the click of a button. That’s progress worth celebrating.

As the quest for a more modern classroom marches on, the assumption is often made that if something can be done digitally, it should be done digitally. However, in an ever-changing landscape of smartphones, e-readers, and classroom laptops, students are losing some of the fundamental cognitive skills gained from physical reading and writing. Students often find novels in print and handwriting notes and essays to be archaic. Still, there is a time and a place for everything.

Teachers make dozens of instructional choices every day, and choosing print can be one of them. Choosing physical text isn’t a rejection of technology but, rather, a deliberate decision to focus on the cognitive behaviors we want students to practice. 

Print Makes Annotation Part of Reading

When students have a physical text in front of them, annotation allows them to physically connect with the work. According to research, handwriting notes is a superior tool for cognitive development compared to typing, engaging broader neural networks and fostering deeper engagement with learning (Marano, G., Kotzalidis, G. et al 2025). While some EdTech offers annotation tools, the physical act of marking up a text makes a stronger impact on a student’s brain.

Students can underline a significant phrase, circle unfamiliar words, and write questions in the margins to ask or research later. Annotations remain attached to the text so students can refer back to prior notes and connect ideas as they read. It’s evidence that a student is interacting with the text. By choosing the print version of the text, the physical book becomes part of a student’s thinking process.

Print Encourages Rereading

In the same way repetition is not inherently failure, rereading is not remediation. Reading text on a screen is often accompanied by progress bars and completion check marks. Although this progress tracking can be satisfying for students and keep them accountable, they might miss important clues that a reread would otherwise encourage. It’s how readers notice things they missed the first time.

According to research, sometimes reading a text up to three times can be beneficial to true comprehension. During the first reading, students are often picking up on what happened. A second reading offers a chance to ask why a character did something and the impact of those choices. A third reading allows students to start more comfortably analyzing the choices the author made (Margolin and Snyder 2018).

A physical text makes returning to those moments and annotations incredibly easy with less pressure to progress. Students can compare what they thought earlier with what they understand now.

The Physical Page Creates a Different Kind of Focus

Reading on a screen can often compete with everything else that comes with being on a device. Notifications, multiple tabs, apps, and the temptation to scroll away can set up subtle distractions that take away from reading. Although e-readers allow for accessibility, when sustained attention is the instructional objective, reducing competing digital demands and focusing on the physical page at hand is the goal. Printed text allows for a distraction-free environment for focus for longer periods of time, a concept that modern students often struggle with in the digital age.

This also goes for handwritten assignments. A handwritten essay unlocks skills like annotation and physically organizing ideas. It allows students to move through their ideas more slowly and intentionally than a quickly typed paper does.

The Power of Print

Print isn’t valuable because it’s traditional; it’s valuable because of what it allows students to do. It’s not archaic; it’s complementary to the efficient and polished final product produced through screens. Screens absolutely belong in the classroom, but when we choose print, we’re not moving backward. We’re choosing a format that can support the kind of sustained attention and reflection that deep reading and writing require.

Resources:

Marano, G., Kotzalidis, G., et al. “The Neuroscience Behind Writing: Handwriting vs. Typing—Who Wins the Battle?” Life 15, no. 3: 345 (2025). https://doi.org/10.3390/life15030345

Margolin, S. J., and Snyder, N. “It may not be that difficult the second time around: the effects of rereading on the comprehension and metacomprehension of negated text.” Journal of Research in Reading 41: 392–402 (2018). doi: 10.1111/1467-9817.12114.