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Students Are Better Off Without a Laptop in the Classroom

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Students Are Better Off Without a Laptop in the Classroom

#81

Post by problems »

izacus wrote: post #36
compuguy wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of us also have terrible handwriting, so taking notes by hand is out of the question. Though I will also surmise that they can also be a distraction.

Why is improving your handwriting out of the question?

I'm in the same situation, my handwriting is illegibly bad, even by myself - the main reason I don't want to improve it is that I just don't use it, haven't for years, it'd be an incredible waste of time and effort. There's no motivating reason to do it except for perhaps some very abstract learning benefit - which hasn't to my knowledge even been proven out in the software engineering or computer science field, where it arguably makes the least sense.

Re: Students Are Better Off Without a Laptop in the Classroom

#82

Post by eduren »

dyarosla wrote: post #76
eduren wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to a state engineering college that provided students with tablet-style laptops so that you could fold the screen down and jot notes+diagrams with a stylus. It was really nice because some of the professors were flexible enough to accept tablet-written homework (one even required it as everybody had the requisite device). I knew plenty of fellow students that eschewed paper notes during their time there.

Out of curiosity, what laptop model and software combo?

The school has been purchasing laptops from the Fujitsu Lifebook T series for a few years now. They swapped out old models for each student after 4 years of use.

Back when I attended, most people were on the Fujitsu Lifebook t901 I think, but looking at their IT site now, the latest models the school uses are http://www.fujitsu.com/global/products/computing/pc/tablets/....

I loved those tablets, the stylus and screen digitizer felt top notch back when I used them.

Software-wise, most students used OneNote for note taking/annotating text and a few professors required https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Journal for assignments. Not sure the preferred approach these days as Journal seems dead.

Re: Students Are Better Off Without a Laptop in the Classroom

#83

Post by discreditable »

dyarosla wrote: post #76
eduren wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to a state engineering college that provided students with tablet-style laptops so that you could fold the screen down and jot notes+diagrams with a stylus. It was really nice because some of the professors were flexible enough to accept tablet-written homework (one even required it as everybody had the requisite device). I knew plenty of fellow students that eschewed paper notes during their time there.

Out of curiosity, what laptop model and software combo?

Speaking for myself, in college (2008-2012) I used an HP EliteBook 2760p. It was a very solid device and I was able to completely eliminate carrying paper binders/folders by using that machine.

The software I used for handwritten notes was Microsoft OneNote. It was even somewhat successful at translating my scrawl into text behind the scenes in order to make my handwritten notes completely searchable.

Re: Students Are Better Off Without a Laptop in the Classroom

#84

Post by praneshp »

izacus wrote: post #36
compuguy wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of us also have terrible handwriting, so taking notes by hand is out of the question. Though I will also surmise that they can also be a distraction.

Why is improving your handwriting out of the question?

Another bad handwriting guy here. For me, the answer is "I have better things to do". Learning to cut out distractions on a laptop will serve me better (IMO).

Although in grad school I never used to a digital method of annotating papers and did it by hand anyway.

Re: Students Are Better Off Without a Laptop in the Classroom

#85

Post by DINKDINK »

zeta0134 wrote: post #74

Oh, okay, I thought the study was going to be on the benefits of attempting to use the laptop itself for classroom purposes, not for social media distractions. This would be more accurately titled, "Students Are Better Off Without Distractions in the Classroom." Though I suppose, it wouldn't make a very catchy headline. I found my laptop to be very beneficial in my classroom learning during college, but only when I m…

>I opened up a word processor, focused my eyes on the professor's slides or visual aids, and typed everything I saw

There are studies that show that verbatim computer note taking is actually inferior to remembering the lecture content:

A Learning Secret: Don’t Take Notes with a Laptop

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-learning-secret...

Re: Students Are Better Off Without a Laptop in the Classroom

#86

Post by discreditable »

zokier wrote: post #78

I love how any education-related topic brings out the armchair-pedagogist out from the woodworks. Of course a big aspect there is that everyone has encountered some amount of education, and especially both courses they enjoyed and disliked. And there is of course the "think of the children" aspect. To avoid making purely meta comment, in my opinion the ship has already sailed; we are going to have computers in classr…

I noticed that the article is speaking from a university perspective. I work in the high school realm, where teachers have more ability to reprimand students not on task. That seems to help students use computers more effectively, but at the same time it requires some effort on the part of the instructor.

Re: Students Are Better Off Without a Laptop in the Classroom

#87

Post by e12e »

imgabe wrote: post #60

I went to college just as laptops were starting to become ubiquitous, but I never saw the point of them in class. I still think they're pretty useless for math, engineering, and science classes where you need to draw symbols and diagrams that you can't easily type. Even for topics where you can write prose notes, I always found it more helpful to be able to arrange them spatially in a way that made sense rather than…

I think devices like the surface pro have shown that we have the technology needed for more advanced io now - we just need proper CAD programs and symbolic math packages that work well with pen/touch input - much along the lines of original Sketchpad[s].

In the same vein, I think "notebooks" of the Jupyter style for R, mathlab or Julia etc - could be a great addition to many classes - allowing interactive exploration etc.

It's an odd time to think computers won't be transformative to learning (also in the classroom) - because we just got useful hardware in affordable packaging.

True, the past decades, computers could probably help better with writing projects - but I know of few places that for example simply let students cooperate on writing up projects with their own wikimedia instance - rather than using crappy dtp/word processors.

On the other hand, I don't think I knew anyone that got top marks on essays in high school who worked only by hand - it's a slow process to work through two-three drafts of a multi-page essay by hand.

[s] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sketchpad

Re: Students Are Better Off Without a Laptop in the Classroom

#88

Post by losteverything »

ourmandave wrote: post #31

This reminds me of the running gag in some college movie where the first day all the students show up. The next cut some students come to class, put a recorder on their desk and leave, then pick it up later. Eventually there's a scene of the professor lecturing to a bunch of empty desks with just recorders. And the final scene there's the professor's tape player playing to the student's recorders.

My first year chemistry courses were entirely taught (self paced) on cassette tape

No lectures.

Office hours if needed. Had to listen to tapes in chem building

(jimmy Carter president)

Re: Students Are Better Off Without a Laptop in the Classroom

#89

Post by discreditable »

DINKDINK wrote: post #85
zeta0134 wrote: post #74

Oh, okay, I thought the study was going to be on the benefits of attempting to use the laptop itself for classroom purposes, not for social media distractions. This would be more accurately titled, "Students Are Better Off Without Distractions in the Classroom." Though I suppose, it wouldn't make a very catchy headline. I found my laptop to be very beneficial in my classroom learning during college, but only when I m…

>I opened up a word processor, focused my eyes on the professor's slides or visual aids, and typed everything I saw There are studies that show that verbatim computer note taking is actually inferior to remembering the lecture content: A Learning Secret: Don’t Take Notes with a Laptop https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-learning-secret...

I'd really like to see a comparison of written notes on a laptop vs paper. Many schools are moving towards tablet PC devices to enable handwritten notes on the computer.

Re: Students Are Better Off Without a Laptop in the Classroom

#90

Post by bitJericho »

robotresearcher wrote: post #37
bitJericho wrote: post #14

The schools are so messed up in the US. Best to just educate children yourself as best you can. As for college kids, best to travel abroad.

> As for college kids, best to travel abroad. 15 of the top 20 universities in the world are in the US. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankin...

It's too bad the US is a giant cesspool that I wouldn't recommend anybody travel to, let alone live in.
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