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The case for banning laptops in the classroom.

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Re: The case for banning laptops in the classroom.

#41

Post by tjr »

nknighthb wrote: post #38
tjr wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 isn't strictly a reply to jawns, but it's on a related topic that I've wondered about. Fifteen years…

A few hundred years ago, nobody expected to go anywhere faster than a horse could take them there, why must we go faster now? Life changes. If people don't like that, there are still some very nice remote forests they can go live in.

A good point! After my comment above, I started thinking, well, a hundred years ago we expected response times in days or weeks via mail, rather than within hours via telephone or email. With the introduction of the telephone, there may well have been some people who felt communicating that quickly was needlessly rushed.

I guess I still retain the wondering, though; with possible response times reduced to effectively instantaneous, are we losing anything? Is it good that anything we are doing can always be interrupted by something else?

Re: The case for banning laptops in the classroom.

#42

Post by nknighthb »

wvenable wrote: post #11
jawns wrote: post #8

In 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…

I think it would be considered rude to open up a full laptop and type out an email in the middle of a business meeting. But I do occasionally check my phone and even reply on it during meetings if it's not distracting. Anything more should require leaving the situation to open up a laptop.

I don't think I've ever been in a scheduled meeting where at least one person wasn't actively using a laptop. Hell, even in the mid-90s, when I'd visit my dad's offices, I saw people going into meetings with what then passed for laptops all the time.

Re: The case for banning laptops in the classroom.

#43

Post by iak8god »

spodek wrote: post #29

> " A wealth of studies on students’ use of computers in the classroom has accumulated to support this intuition. Among the most famous is a landmark Cornell University study from 2003 called “The Laptop and the Lecture,” wherein half of a class was allowed unfettered access to their computers during a lecture while the other half was asked to keep their laptops closed. " The problem is the lecture! Teachers who don'…

> Teachers who don't engage students -- and lecturing will rarely engage anyone -- are the problem ... If you didn't engage the students, no amount of banning things they care about more than you droning on in front of them will make them care.

University students who have no interest in a course's material have no business being enrolled in that course. These are adults who are there voluntarily, and should be expected to participate in their own education without instructors jumping through hoops to engage them. A lecture is an opportunity for students to hear from an expert about a topic that should be of interest to them. Of course teachers should strive to present information in a way that's accessible and captivating, but even the driest lecture is no excuse to space out. It is not really feasible to compete for students' attention with the information equivalent of junk food while presenting and explaining serious, in-depth material.

Re: The case for banning laptops in the classroom.

#44

Post by nlawalker »

BruceIV wrote: post #22
nlawalker wrote: post #17

If instructors really wanted to raise the quality of their classroom environments, instead of banning laptops, they'd commit to posting all their lectures, slides and announcements online and tell students that if they don't want to be there in person that they don't need to be. Many people don't see the point in being physically present to hear someone talk and point at slides. Those that do, and aren't just attendi…

Because a good lecturer will do more than just read off his or her slides, and if they tell students the slides will be available than many of them won't show up, and will miss out good material. Video-recording the lectures is another thing entirely, but if the students are going to actually go to the trouble of watching them they may as well actually come to class where they can ask questions, get feedback, and get…

>> if the students are going to actually go to the trouble of watching them they may as well actually come to class where they can ask questions, get feedback, and get involved in class exercises.

I strongly disagree. Many lectures aren't structured to include or allow these activities, and many students don't need or want to participate in them. Those students are the ones who sit behind their laptops the whole period, and everyone would be better served if they didn't have to come to lecture in person.

Re: The case for banning laptops in the classroom.

#45

Post by Htsthbjig »

How about teaching students not to distract themselves?

I am serious about it. Students are going to live and work with Internet and all distractions. They need this ability that like others it is learned and nurtured.

I mean, something like this: http://www.lynda.com/Business-Business-Skills-tutorials/Gett...

There are lots of good programs out there. Today this knowledge is as important as Mathematics. Probably more important for some people.

I have studied a lot in order to be able to work productively from home. It is very easy once you know lots of little things.

I could scientifically proof to any person how much she destroys her productivity just multitasking, using very simple things, like video cameras(which everybody has in her phone) and paper, because I have studied the psychology that fools ourselves into believing we could watch facebook and a lecture at the same time.

In my experience teaching people this works wonders. Without it, they are lost. They want something(get good grades, work with less effort), but they don't know how to do it.

About a programming class without computers, I will fire the teacher whose idea is banning laptops instantly. I am engineer and program computers for a living, with experience teaching people. They are incompetent if they can't control students with computers. If they are so boring the students prefer to browse Internet in class, then the problem is the teacher, not the student.

Re: The case for banning laptops in the classroom.

#46

Post by jseliger »

I banned laptops ages ago: http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2008/12/28/laptops-students-di... , and for reasons further described here: http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2010/06/28/the-shallows-what-t... .

I agree with the comments about lectures being bad (usually) and teachers needing to engage with students, but electronic distractions also make it harder for teachers to effectively engage.

This is not meant to denigrate the posters in this thread, but I get the sense that most a) are different than the average student and b) have not been teachers. The second point in particular is important because people who have faced the challenges teachers face may have domain knowledge that non-teachers lack.

Re: The case for banning laptops in the classroom.

#47

Post by Htsthbjig »

existencebox wrote: post #3
mathattack wrote: post #2

I'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 problem with laptops is keyboard noise.

Compare note taking with keyboard typing in a class with several dozen people and you will see noise is a big problem if you are the teacher.

I personally believe the best solution is audio record anything the teacher says, automatically transcribe it and just draw diagrams and stuff.

But it will take some time before people start doing it.

Re: The case for banning laptops in the classroom.

#48

Post by vitd »

dangoldin wrote: post #15

My mom's a music teacher and this reminded me of a letter she wrote to the local newspaper after discovering they want to buy more computers for the classroom. Here goes: I'm not denying that I am hopelessly old and outdated, but reading the article on Technology Needs for School District (May 15, 2014) literally made me cry; for two reasons. First, because the people who are in charge of education are actually going…

I don't find this convincing at all. I'm a classically trained pianist and cellist. I studied music at the undergraduate level, and am a former part-time working musician, and a current computer programmer. I grew up with computers and used them far more than my classmates, and I got onto the internet before the world-wide web existed. I continue to take music lessons and feel like I'm learning and performing better than ever.

If what she's saying were true, we'd be seeing a significant drop in the quality of students entering music school and entering the job market. I don't see that happening. Does she? Are there fewer qualified students entering music programs? While symphonies are having trouble finding funding due to lack of interest, I don't see finding qualified musicians being a problem. What about other types of music? Are they seeing these issues? There seem to be plenty of bands of various styles out there playing in my town.

When I was a kid, I spent hours per day on my computer - mostly CREATING music. (Listening to music the way it's done today on the computer wasn't feasible.) I spent hours communicating with other musicians about how to improve my skills as a musician, and nowadays, I spend hours on the computer finding, listening to and studying music as well. It can be a wonderful tool for music.

Perhaps there's something else going on with your mother's students in addition to or besides the computers? Maybe the problem isn't the computers but specifically social media, or something along those lines? Regardless, her conclusions about what computers do to students are out of line with reality.

Re: The case for banning laptops in the classroom.

#49

Post by ghkbrew »

watwut wrote: post #36
BruceIV wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because a good lecturer will do more than just read off his or her slides, and if they tell students the slides will be available than many of them won't show up, and will miss out good material. Video-recording the lectures is another thing entirely, but if the students are going to actually go to the trouble of watching them they may as well actually come to class where they can ask questions, get feedback, and get…

On the other hand, video can be stopped, rewinded and you have more time to think about the question and find the answer by yourself.

Or played at 1.5x speed.

One of the problems with lectures is that they tend to be geared towards the lowest common denominator. The great thing about the few of my college courses that provided online lectures was that I could go through them at my own pace and not be bored out of my mind for 90min of a 2hr lecture.

Re: The case for banning laptops in the classroom.

#50

Post by booruguru »

This kind of bullshit drives me crazy.

If I chose to spend thousands of dollars so I can goof off during a lecture, that's my prerogative. I don't need some to dictate what's in my best interest.

My PowerBook was a huge boon for me in college. I write far better notes with a laptop than with pen and paper. What's more, I was able to multitask in ways that are simply impossible without a computer. If I were to encounter a teacher arrogant enough to ban laptops from his presence, I would simply refuse to take any of his classes, even if they were mandatory. I would literally chose another school before leaving my laptop at home.

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