The case for banning laptops in the classroom.
newyorker.com
The case for banning laptops in the classroom.
1–10 of 65 posts
Re: The case for banning laptops in the classroom.
#2I've seen issues in meetings with this too. It's great for follow-up to be typing notes in the meeting, but it takes a lot of discipline for it not to devolve, and it's tough on speakers to discuss when everyone else is heads down.
Re: The case for banning laptops in the classroom.
#3I've seen issues in meetings with this too. It's great for follow-up to be typing notes in the meeting, but it takes a lot of discipline for it not to devolve, and it's tough on speakers to discuss when everyone else is heads down.
I personally would be absolutely hamstrung without a laptop in meetings. My own handwriting is notoriously messy (I am only to blame for not practicing it enough to be any good, but that's almost a tradeoff for working in front of a computer nearly 24/7) and FAR slower than typing. I'm also unable to use text editor style shortcuts,reformat after the fact for clarity, or readily keep track off/move around documents. I found the exact things they claimed happened to laptop note takers, being a 'zombie', to be what happened when I tried to take notes by hand. This also doesn't convince me when taken in concert that when aggressively pushed onto the "YOU MUST TAKE PHYSICAL NOTES WITH NO DISTRACTIONS" bandwagon for most of my primary schooling, which was, to put it lightly, less than successful.
This overly rambly anecdote should serve to illustrate not that I think laptops are "the right answer", but getting rid of them unilaterally will really harm those who actually have learned to incorporate them into a useful workflow. Why not address some more root causes, e.g. why engagement is so low? Facebook doesn't "force" you to browse it, and maybe I'm acting snoody in this, but there are certainly classes that I wouldn't be caught playing my favorite video games during for the subject matter being so interesting.
Re: The case for banning laptops in the classroom.
#4How about banning classrooms in favor of laptops?
Hyperbole sure, but I was an on class student who paid for distance learning because I preferred the freedom to take the class on my time, on 2x speed, and with the ability to pause and look things up. It was never worth it to go back to class.
It begs the question: maybe it's the teaching method, and not the tool.
Re: The case for banning laptops in the classroom.
#5How about banning classrooms in favor of laptops? Hyperbole sure, but I was an on class student who paid for distance learning because I preferred the freedom to take the class on my time, on 2x speed, and with the ability to pause and look things up. It was never worth it to go back to class. It begs the question: maybe it's the teaching method, and not the tool.
From the article:
"These examples can be seen as the progeny of an ill-conceived union of twenty-first-century tools (computers, tablets, smartphones) with nineteenth-century modalities (lectures)."
Re: The case for banning laptops in the classroom.
#6I've seen issues in meetings with this too. It's great for follow-up to be typing notes in the meeting, but it takes a lot of discipline for it not to devolve, and it's tough on speakers to discuss when everyone else is heads down.
I personally would be absolutely hamstrung without a laptop in meetings. My own handwriting is notoriously messy (I am only to blame for not practicing it enough to be any good, but that's almost a tradeoff for working in front of a computer nearly 24/7) and FAR slower than typing. I'm also unable to use text editor style shortcuts,reformat after the fact for clarity, or readily keep track off/move around documents.…
The people in the meeting should be participating in the meeting.
The meeting needs a fast and accurate note taker to shorthand or type what everyone is saying and distribute those notes.
That leaves you free to make the important notes and mark your action points. (This can be paper or laptop).
Re: The case for banning laptops in the classroom.
#7Anecdotally fits in with my experience. I always sat at the back off the lecture theatre (but its only 20 rows deep), and the people with laptops were almost always doing something other than paying full attention to the lecturer. I used to leave my phone in my dorm lest I end up checking out a tech blog and be completely lost of the rest of the lecture
Re: The case for banning laptops in the classroom.
#8In the lower grades, I think a case can be made that during the time they are in class, students should not have any other demands on their time.
In contrast, with college students, I don't think it's unreasonable to think that -- at least occasionally -- a student may need to "check out" from a lecture momentarily to deal with some pressing business, even if it means that he has to spend time later asking a classmate to fill him in on what he missed.
For instance, maybe I'm in class, and I get an extremely important email and need to send an immediate reply. Maybe I'm a working-adult student and my babysitter has just IMed me. Maybe I manage the campus newspaper's website and someone just sent me a report of a critical bug that I need to deal with right away.
This is all the sort of stuff I encounter regularly in the working world, and I don't think it's unreasonable to think that college students encounter it, too.
Being able to keep open a laptop to deal with things like this is a lot less distracting than having to step outside the lecture hall to take an urgent phone call.
Yes, putting away the laptops might slightly increase students' abilities to soak up the material, but (sorry, professors) sometimes the class you're sitting in is not your top priority, and sometimes that's OK. I occasionally had to skip class to chase down a hot story for the school newspaper, and I don't regret it a bit. So long as the student is using the privilege responsibly, I say let 'em keep the laptop open!
Re: The case for banning laptops in the classroom.
#9UC Berkeley student here; laptop bannings are actually relatively common in lectures. I've seen professors actually stop their lectures to yell at some student in the back until said student puts his laptop away.
A relevant point that the article failed to mention was, laptop/tablet/smartphone usage distracts not only the user, but those around him as well [1]. Just having such a device in view lowers the comprehension of material.
[1] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360131512...
Re: The case for banning laptops in the classroom.
#10In the lower grades, I think a case can be made that during the time they are in class, students should not have any other demands on their time. In contrast, with college students, I don't think it's unreasonable to think that -- at least occasionally -- a student may need to "check out" from a lecture momentarily to deal with some pressing business, even if it means that he has to spend time later asking a classmat…
That's what your phone is for.