

 Why I Ban Laptops in My Classroom  - razorburn
http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2008/10/why-i-ban-laptops-in-my-classroom/

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micks56
I am in law school. I started school not bringing my laptop but that quickly
changed.

My notes are better because I can edit without crossing out. I can insert,
delete, and copy+paste.

I make bold, italics, larger print, etc.

My notes are in outline format from the beginning. There is no need for me to
waste time by typing my notes at a later date. Trust me. In law school you
need a very comprehensive outline to take a final. Handwritten notes won't get
you there. Also, when it comes time to take the bar, you want your old
outlines. They will get lost in print form.

Also, several classes require you to have the text of large volumes of
statutes. I am talking 1000 pages of statutes per class. I have electronic
copies of those. That saves me from having to carry extra books (not to
mention the tress).

Also, I can search my notes, cases, and statutes to find the information I
need. I am not flipping through a book with 1000 pages of statutes. I can
simply search for "notice" in UCC Article 9 and it will bring me to every
single statute where notice matters. Very awesome.

I also search my notes and outlines from classes I already took to serve as a
refresher when outside issues arise. Very handy.

Of course the computer can be a distraction. But it is a damn good learning
tool, too. When it is time to listen, I stop taking notes. When a student or
professor says something important, I write it down, just as if I used paper.

~~~
woodsier
I agree completely. The students that misuse the laptop are going to end up
getting a grade they deserve, regardless. This professor is putting the burden
on himself, when it should remain on the students.

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jrockway
FWIW, I rarely found classes valuable when I was in school; they mostly
consisted of the professor (or TA, usually) reading us the textbook. I only
went to class so that I wouldn't miss surprise exams. A laptop was nice to
have so I could do something useful during the class periods that weren't
exams.

That said, I did have a few interesting classes, and I never needed a laptop
in those. I imagine that the author of the article teaches interesting
classes, and I think it's a shame that people want to sit in front of him and
buy shoes instead of listen.

Also, from the article:

 _The University of Chicago – as committed as it is to personal freedom and
choice — has decided to block internet access in all its classrooms._

Is this true? That wasn't the case when I was there.

(Edit: aha, only the law school:
<http://news.uchicago.edu/news.php?asset_id=1329>. I hope nobody tells them
that 3G access for laptops is nearly free these days -- technical solutions to
social problems _never_ work.)

~~~
jseliger
"FWIW, I rarely found classes valuable when I was in school; they mostly
consisted of the professor (or TA, usually) reading us the textbook. I only
went to class so that I wouldn't miss surprise exams. A laptop was nice to
have so I could do something useful during the class periods that weren't
exams."

It's hard to gauge whether this says more about your ability to contrast and
draw imaginative connections between the material and yourself or whether this
indicates that you went to schools that aren't very good.

~~~
thras
I never found classes valuable myself. You'd be surprised how amazing the
ability to read is. Apart from anything else, the spoken word is very slow.

~~~
kirse
I'd agree, for the most part. Especially with Gen-Eds, I would just hope for
powerpoints or go to the local notetaking service and grab a copy of the notes
and just cram for the exams. I'd try to pick Gen-Ed's that were interesting,
but the exams and everything else just made learning a chore.

Classes I actually found useful:

\- Technical writing (english)

\- This SOC class where all the teacher did was talk about real life and the
lessons he learned. Amazing stories, so much advice still sticks with me to
this day.

\- My Enterprise Integration class which had so much cutting edge info I knew
more than my co-workers on some things when I started a job. I still wish I
had saved all the notes.

Aside that, the most important stuff I learned in college were all real-life
lessons.

------
fallentimes
Many of these reasons are why I didn't take notes in most of my classes (for
some it was obviously necessary).

PG used to get perturbed at me when I wouldn't write anything down when I had
meetings with him. But really, it was because I wanted 100% of my attention
focused on listening.

~~~
tjr
I tend to be the same way. Taking notes whilst listening to someone speak
interrupts my ability to absorb what they are saying.

That said, depending on the nature of the speech, a few keyword notes are
harmless (and sometimes required), and it seems prudent to write things down
in more detail as quickly as possible afterwards.

~~~
jeroen
Something similar happens when I'm on a trip and bring my camera. I can take
home either pictures or memories.

~~~
jleyank
I try for both when I have a camera. The act of taking a picture is so short,
and framing a picture is in sync with appreciating the view. For OMFG moments,
the camera comes second, and can occasionally be missed. For rapid-fire
events, I've found that the camera (DSLR) has caught things I've missed cuz
the eye's only so fast and the "data buffer's so small...

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LogicHoleFlaw
Honestly, I have a hard time concentrating on a presenter when I have a laptop
with me. That's a large part of why I'm much more likely to be seen with an
old-fashioned pen and notepad when something is actually important to
understand.

~~~
silencio
I have a hard time writing legibly with pen and paper due to tremors and there
are people with all sorts of disabilities like dysgraphia. I can only hope
these professors can allow for exceptions to the rule.

~~~
LogicHoleFlaw
I would be shocked if they did not, to be honest. It just seems like common
courtesy to me to cater to each individual's needs. Even if a professor
objects though, there are some very vigorously enforced laws which are
intended to help people with physical or mental challenges. School
administrations take them very seriously.

(I'm mildly dyslexic myself, so please don't take those terms pejoratively.)

~~~
silencio
Just speaking from prior bad experiences :) I used to use laptops back even in
high school, where the teachers were fine with it but made it clear it was a
privilege extended to us that could be revoked should there be any misuse. One
teacher caught a kid playing a game in class and wouldn't let anyone in his
classes use a laptop. I got pretty mad in the beginning, but the whole thing
blew over before I had a chance to go see if I could get an exemption from
that rule with a doctor's note.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. I know I've definitely been on IRC in
class while taking notes (however, some of it was with fellow classmates...)
and more, and I really do see how this can be a problem. But computers can be
pretty helpful...sigh.

I've tried looking into ways to take notes without distracting other people,
and I think my iPhone would be perfect if only I could use it with an external
bluetooth keyboard or something.

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bigthboy
From my position, I see two root causes why this is the problem and they could
be fixed (its what my venture is working on doing). The problem with laptops
most notably is the fact that they have this screen. The screen more or less
creates a barrier between the person and speaker. This is not a good thing,
especially not in a classroom and its also disrepsectful to the speaker. The
second is laptops that are not being used for education but rather, as the
article writer suggested, for Instant Messaging or other various purposes. If,
theoretically, the laptop was one that was specifically designed and built for
use in the classroom by students on a day-to-day basis, the problems addressed
in this article would not be an issue. However, because they aren't, many
times students don't have adequate tools on their laptops, the tools that are
there are time consuming and hard to switch between for doing multiple things
at one time, and they aren't focused on anything educationally enriching.

[promo]That's exactly what my venture, EDunuity, is working to
address.[/promo]

~~~
silencio
How you determine what tools the students need in the first place? I've used
laptops heavily for almost all my classes for the past few years now
(obviously I can't take a laptop to a ceramics class, for example) and the
tools I use depends on the class.

For most classes I can get away with using textmate, voodoopad and word
(yuck). However, for classes with lots of diagrams I can't easily reproduce on
the computer, I'll take out the tablet and use it with voodoopad specifically.
Another person using a laptop in my class just brings a digital camera and
takes pictures. There was one class I had where someone else wanted to take
notes with me, so we used google docs in class. But I don't do that in a CS
class, where I usually just bring out my IDE of choice and start hacking away
and occasionally take notes.

Just a thought.

~~~
bigthboy
Well, the determination was made partly on what I and my co-founder have both
experienced (being we're both students, freshmen in college), and additional
talking we've done with both teachers and students in various types of
classes. We've also done a fair amount of reading from studies about the usage
of laptops/tablets in the classroom and read opinion articles like these to
observe the issues.

In your case, you're one of the students who has already made that digital
jump over and has all the gear you need. You, being the geek that I'll assume
you are (-don't take that as an insult, I am too...), got these tools and self
taught them and are self disciplined in their usage. However, most students
and most schools don't have this.

While my venture is specifically interested in K12, we are interested in
college too. For most classes (a ceramics class could be an exception), you
have your basic necessities and then some additional tools you could be using.
That's what we're focused on in our works, is creating the basics in a way
that can be easily and seamlessly used in classes so that every student has
access to the tools and resources they need, and with a certain degree of
personalization to fit the different needs of different people.

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nickbtard
Awkward. I am in class right now.

------
ctingom
It's the same with conferences. Have you ever given a talk to a group of
people and more than half are looking at their laptops? It really makes you
ponder all of the time you put into preparing your presentation.

~~~
Eliezer
With respect, maybe your audience is telling you to build a better
presentation.

~~~
jrockway
Nope, people have their laptops out at even the best speakers' talks. It's an
addiction.

~~~
sofal
So do professors ban laptops because they genuinely want to help students
overcome their addiction, or because the professors don't feel like they're
getting the attention that they deserve?

~~~
jrockway
The article answers this question.

Basically, students think they can multi-task (IM and listen to the lecture),
but professors know that the students can't.

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RK
Of the classes I've taken within the past 4 years, all of the
professors/instructors have placed their notes online. I figured that all
classes were going this direction. I personally find taking (verbatim-ish)
notes to be a big distraction.

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lacker
Sad but true. I wish there was a way to have laptops be part of a positive
teaching experience. Maybe if you had live chat rooms during the lecture it
could make the class richer rather than more distracted.

~~~
markbao
IRC backchannel?

There are a lot of things that can benefit from a backchannel. Live event,
conference, etc. Having a discussion between viewers can be really valuable.

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paul9290
With a laptop i could record the lecture while surfing the web and paying
attention here and there as i always did.

With the audio recordings Im sure Id want to listen/study to the bullet points
only. Thus, I'd create a program that did this and sell the audio cliff notes
to my fellow classmates.

He should say laptops are optional...not outright ban them; let students do
what is best for them. Have a row of laptop users ..row non laptop users.

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tdavis
I think banning laptops in class is a good idea. When I had my laptop in class
I basically screwed around and looked up at the board occasionally to see if
the professor had written anything on it. Turns out that's a pretty worthless
way to take notes.

Then again, I get deathly bored of physical writing after about 2 sentences
and half the time I can't even read what I wrote so I was more or less screwed
either way.

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awt
I was never able to get much out of lectures in college. My ability to
remember what people say out loud is practically nil. My handwriting was poor,
and I could not write quickly. In any case, what was the point of my
transcribing lectures instead of just reading material?

The only time I ever learned anything directly from a prof was talking to him
in his office until I could put things into my own words.

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gills
Heh...if some douche wants to waste his tuition by screwing around with his
laptop, that's between him and his wallet (although, under the TARP, it's
arguably between him and _my_ wallet...grrr).

My laptop stays shut during lectures and presentations unless I have the
notes/slides on my screen or need to cross-reference something with another
source. Anything else is too distracting for me.

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profgubler
At my university we had a no laptops policy on case study discussion. At first
you kinda get annoyed about it, but you later realize how important it is. It
is nice to pay attention and not have to worry about the guy next to you
playing call of duty on his laptop. I also must say that I missed several
things surfing the web. I think there should be a no text messaging policy as
well in classes.

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dhughes
My cousin is a Philosophy professor and he says it's annoying to hear "tappity
tap tap" all the time, even when he isn't saying anything or before class
starts, you can tell people are using IM.

I say jam the wifi signal, set up an access point with a signal booster but
don't have it attached to anything. I'm not sure if that will work but it's
worth a try.

~~~
khafra
The simplest way to do it with standard 802.11 equipment would be to transmit
at high gain on channels 2 or 3, 6 or 7, and 9 or 10. But there's lots of
devices that cover that spectrum; it'd be cheaper to rip the transformer and
magnetron out of an old microwave oven and energize that in the middle of the
classroom. Use a pulse width modulator to step down the power by a few orders
of magnitude if you're feeling generous enough to not cook your students.

*note: Do not actually do this.

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jmah
In situations where I want to take notes but don't want to distract myself or
others, I keep my laptop on but with no backlighting (so the display's almost
black). I can just stream what I want into there and edit it later. Often I'll
grab audio as well.

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skmurphy
When I was in school we didn't have laptops and we paid attention all of the
time. OK, maybe not.

We used quill pens so we could only pick out a few keywords to scratch down to
jog our memory: parchment was so expensive that we would rotate the paper 90
degrees after we had written in one direction and write across. You could
normally make out both directions if you were careful. I think the harder it
was to write the more we appreciated what we had. Not like students these
days.

This is nuts. He wants his lectures to be absorbed the same way he did when he
was in law school. Student don't need a laptop to tune you out.

How would you design lectures if you knew every student had a laptop and wifi?
I can't believe we will be using pen and paper in even 30 years to laboriously
transcribe lectures.

~~~
skmurphy
A lot of folks are writing in to explain how they didn't pay attention in
class because they had a laptop. The argument seems to be that "I can't focus
on class if I have access to a laptop--so no one in class should have one."

What happens when they get back to their desk: most jobs these days involve
access to a PC/browser. It would seem like they would also be tempted to surf
the web instead of work. Do they want to prohibit their co-workers (and
competitors) from having access to the web? Should we go back to programming
using a keypunch?

How/when do you develop the self-control to focus on the task at hand? Pencil
and paper allow you to doodle and not pay attention. The challenge is not the
affordances of the laptop but the inability to focus.

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jseliger
I teach English 101 at the University of Arizona and ban laptops for similar
reasons. I'd prefer the students be engaged with the class and not suffer from
the chronically divided attention they probably do elsewhere.

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yesimahuman
If you are teaching an important class for a major then I can understand it.
But when you are teaching a class that everyone has to take to satisfy one
little requirement, banning laptops is annoying.

~~~
wmf
In that case it sounds like laptops are not the real problem.

------
alecco
Good. Myself, I want to get rid of physical classrooms and go back to
teaching, this time just online instead. Let's see what approach will prevail
in the long run ;)

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Alex3917
If people are banned from taking notes on laptops, then they should be banned
from taking notes on pen and paper also.

~~~
apsurd
That makes no sense. It's almost as if you did not read the article. [i did
not either =p, but it still makes no sense.]

The laptop has much more of a chance of being distracting. Pen and paper can
and does, such as old school IM (passing notes), but its about killing the
slippery slope.

I personally support all bans on all (personal)technology in a classroom
setting. This includes phones, laptops etc.

What happend to the Socratic method of teaching/learning? =(

~~~
MaysonL
Reminds me of an article in Byte magazine back in the 80s or early 90s. A
student at Georgia Tech wrote his dissertation on a program he developed for a
personal digital assistant program, hosted on a wearable computer. Partway
through his dissertation defence, the examiners realized that he was using his
dissertation to defend itself. Would you have voted his thesis up or down?

~~~
tomjen
I would have voted him up if he was doing AI - the most impressive way to get
a phd in AI would be to have your creation defend your thesis for you.

~~~
apsurd
agreed, obviously if you are studying technology and specifically
technological assistence interfaces/tools then those specific instances have a
place in the classroom. I would think firearms are banned in classrooms right?
What about at police academies or your local "weapons manufacturing trade
school". See what I'm getting at?

I just see overwhelmingly more times than not students using
aim/facebook/meebo/yahoo games/ during class. I'm sure there IS an argument to
be made for people that actually use their laptops to "optimize" learning, but
they are few and far between imo.

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sireat
There is no question, laptop use is counter productive in most classes.
Unfortunately, for the student there are many classes where a student might
already know most/all of the material, but is still "forced" to attend the
class. Then it is gaming, chatting, browsing time. In fact, teachers could use
students' laptop use as barometer for how engaging their teaching methods are.

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mickt
And ban them in many meetings too ...

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gcheong
What if your class is online?

