
The case for banning laptops in the classroom. - DLay
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2014/06/the-case-for-banning-laptops-in-the-classroom.html
======
jawns
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 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!

~~~
tjr
_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 ago, such instantaneous, ubiquitous communication was very rare.
I went through college without having instant notification of anything
whatsoever, as did pretty much everyone I knew at the time.

Babysitters ran into issues fifteen years ago; there were bugs in websites
fifteen years ago; there were critical emails being sent out fifteen years
ago, but nobody expected constant, instant feedback because it was
implausible, and everyone was okay with that.

Are our problems today really that much more urgent than they were then, that
we truly need to be constantly connected? Or is this imaginary, and since we
in theory _can_ respond instantly, people now expect that we _must_?

~~~
nknighthb
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.

~~~
tjr
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?

------
lukejduncan
How 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.

~~~
neltnerb
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)."

------
spodek
> " _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't engage students -- and lecturing rarely engages anyone --
push students away from material they don't care about. If students are
engaged and laptops impede them, they'll put them away themselves. If you
didn't engage the students, no amount of banning things they care about more
than being lectured at will make them care.

If you have to ban something, ban the lecture and teachers who rely on
lecturing at the expense of empathy and compassion for students.

Students are people like you and me. We use laptops in our work when they help
and put them away when they don't. If we want students to learn about the
world and how to succeed in it, let them work like we work, solving problems
like we solve. Experiential, project-based learning does this automatically,
at least with effective teachers. Lecturing doesn't. If you had a job you
couldn't quit where your manager lectured at you all the time you'd get out
your computer too.

HN just had a thread --
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7739378](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7739378)
\-- on the problems with lectures based on a Science Magazine article,
"Lectures Aren’t Just Boring, They’re Ineffective, Too, Study Finds.” Here is
my blog post with related notes from that thread -- "Why I avoid lecturing
when I lead and teach" [http://joshuaspodek.com/avoid-lecturing-lead-
teach](http://joshuaspodek.com/avoid-lecturing-lead-teach)

~~~
iak8god
> 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.

~~~
xemoka
I entirely disagree. You cannot put all the onus on the students when
departments and degrees require classes that hold no interest to the pupil.

Sure, I'll give you that this may apply for 4th (and perhaps 3rd) year classes
and post grads. However, most entry level courses are mindless drivel and a
complete waste of both the student's and instructor's time (English 100
anyone?), although are 'required' to continue on (or get that degree).
Academia doesn't fit happily into your little box.

The dryest lecture may not be an excuse to space out, but good luck. You may
be the perfect pupil, attentive to every single word a lecturer says for 3
hours—most people though can't even listen and process past 45 minutes. I
personally can listen for a while, but get bored... lectures rarely move fast
enough for me and can rarely keep my attention unless actually stimulating.

Academics is a two way street, both the pupil and instructor must participate
in order for a successful transfer of knowledge. How many instructors have you
had that teach their course right from a textbook without anything added? Lazy
instructors create lazy and bored students.

------
jseliger
I banned laptops ages ago: [http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2008/12/28/laptops-
students-di...](http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2008/12/28/laptops-students-
distraction-hardly-a-surprise/) , and for reasons further described here:
[http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2010/06/28/the-shallows-
what-t...](http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2010/06/28/the-shallows-what-the-
internet-is-doing-to-our-brains-nicholar-carr/) .

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.

------
akrolsmir
UC 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...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360131512002254)

~~~
canthonytucci
> 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.

If you can't concentrate because the person next to you is on reddit you're
going to have a hard time in an open office.

Full disclosure, I only skimmed this paper, but I'd say this study has very
little in common with the actual scenario of a good professor giving a
stimulating lecture.

People learn and take notes differently, students should be granted the
respect to do whatever works best for them, professors' egos be damned.

EDIT: Not to mention these students are paying customers....if they choose to
waste their time in class, that's up to them.

~~~
DanBC
> If you can't concentrate because the person next to you is on reddit you're
> going to have a hard time in an open office.

Yes, open offices are a terrible idea because many people lose a lot of their
productivity in those distracting environments.

------
nlawalker
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 attending because you
might spring a surprise announcement or pop quiz on them, will be there to pay
attention.

~~~
BruceIV
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
involved in class exercises.

(I do realize that there are lots of horrible lecturers out there who do
nothing more than read off the PowerPoint that comes with the textbook, but I
think the correct approach to that is to re-work the tenure system to promote
good lecturers as well as good researchers, not abolish lectures.)

~~~
watwut
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.

~~~
ghkbrew
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.

------
mathattack
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.

~~~
existencebox
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.

~~~
DanBC
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).

~~~
mathattack
Is the optimal situation where everyone can see what the note-taker is
writing? Has anyone done this?

To stay engaged, I've used the scrawl now and type later method, which means
the notes never get out early enough. They do allow me to reflect on them
though.

------
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.

~~~
adwf
It's not just about you though. In a lecture of 100+ people on laptops, you're
bound to have plenty of distracting people browsing youtube, watching flashy
videos or somesuch.

That sort of thing can affect the people around you negatively. In that
regard, it's hardly any different than asking the hall to be silent while the
lecture is on, rather than everyone chatting out loud.

~~~
serge2k
I had a professor who just had a rule that people with laptops had to sit at
the back. Worked fine.

~~~
adwf
That's not a bad idea. As long as you don't have the entire room filled with
laptop users ;)

------
slightlycuban
So, I could get on my soapbox of "your students are adults, let them make
their own decisions on note taking" or go on about how useful I found a
calendar for remembering class schedules, but:

> We still haven’t made it easy to type notation-laden sentences, so the
> potential benefits were low.

Really? I found it fairly easy to type out full equations in LaTeX using LyX.
Maybe the laptop isn't the problem, but that you only introduce your students
to the most basic of word processors.

------
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...](http://www.lynda.com/Business-Business-Skills-
tutorials/Getting-Things-Done/170776-2.html)

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.

~~~
BruceIV
Programming _lectures_ without laptops work great (though it may help for the
lecturer has a laptop and can show examples). If you want the students to
follow along, that's what lab section is for (at least where I did undergrad,
most of the programming classes had one). I've TA'd some of those lab
sections, and there are a shocking number of ways the students can fail to
manage to follow along with the examples without extensive hand-holding. Which
they absolutely should get, and which they absolutely need a computer for, but
a lecture with dozens of students and a unit of theory to get through is not
the time for it.

------
specialk
Personally from my college experience I know that I have used my laptop in
lectures for both good and evil. I have legitimately used it to google work,
ideas and to open tabs on papers/etc. to read later. I also used to write code
in all my programming lectures because programming lectures were dull
otherwise, might as well make use of the time. However, there are many times I
have opened up reddit or HN during lectures and 'checked-out' as the article
suggested.

Sometimes I have paid for not listening to the lecture but the majority of the
time it doesn't matter. The idea that I learned my college curriculum in
lectures would be a joke. As a computer science student I learnt my trade in
the labs and tutorials and interactive courses rarely from listening to a
lecturer explain X, Y or Z.

The better the lecturer or the harder the module the more laptops that were
closed in my lectures. My compiler design course for example, infamous for
being the most difficult module no one dared open the laptop as there was too
much knowledge to consume.

Lecturers can easily do a self-assessment survey of how engaged their class is
and how interestingly they are presenting their material but how many heads
are hidden behind laptop screens.

For the one lecturer who did ban laptops I have to say I went to absolutely
none of his lectures unless I had coursework to submit. I found it a bit
presumptuous that he could demand I close my laptop, I was not distracting him
or disturbing the class.

You don't learn in lectures where lecturers read their slides to you laptop
open or not. If the lecturers are going to waste my time with pointless
reading of slides then I might as well do something useful on my laptop like
my coursework or just read hacker news.

------
juliendorra
Socrates would have us ban note taking completely, because writing is a
distraction and limit our ability to use our memory.

~~~
arjie
This is so true for me though. I've discovered that I learn more when I'm not
taking notes.

Especially in Maths or CS where classrooms are great for building intuition or
easing into a subject but textbooks are ubiquitous and easy to read.

Copying down a proof doesn't help me at all but doing it along with a
professor (each mental step is easy to hold on to) gives me so much better
results.

I imagine that I'm not the only such one.

------
dredmorbius
An aspect of this not covered: being present in the moment. The context is
squatting (and physical training), but the lesson is the same:

[http://squatrx.blogspot.com/2008/12/being-
present.html](http://squatrx.blogspot.com/2008/12/being-present.html)

 _Multi-tasking seems to be the way most people nowadays operate, but it doesn
't mean people are doing a better job at more things. It means they are
addicted to multi-tasking and they are incapable of actually being present for
longer than a few moments. Perhaps these people are better at transitioning
from one thing to the next, but I wonder if that applies to disparate tasks -
my guess is that it doesn't transfer itself particularly well to new, complex
skills._

 _Being able to say "no" to distraction is crucial to the ability to be "in
the present". This isn't license to be an a-hole of course, just permission to
say to yourself "I have many things I need to do, but I'm going to focus on
this ONE THING right now"._

------
greglo
Anecdotally 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

------
vlunkr
College students are adults, why don't we let them decide how they use their
class time. If someone wants to pay to go to a university just to waste class
time on a computer, that's their loss. For others, note taking on a laptop
might be more efficient. Personally, I have terrible handwriting and would
prefer to take notes digitally. If someone is seriously distracting people
around them, then it makes sense to tell them to put their laptop away

------
BruceIV
One of the side points the author raised was interesting: namely, that there's
a lack of good tooling for taking mathematical-notation heavy notes
efficiently on laptop ... maybe some sort of Markdown with inline LaTeX (plain
LaTeX is too much of a hassle to do paragraph/list formatting in). It
shouldn't be technically difficult to build, it just oddly doesn't seem to
exist yet.

~~~
lartoa
In my experience, LaTeX is not really a worthy alternative to writing formulas
by hand. Sure, you should absolutely use LaTeX for typesetting mathematical
reports and the like, but LaTeX does not stand a chance against pen and paper
when it comes to taking notes or doing calculations. The world needs tooling
that is much more similar to writing formulas on a paper in its interface. At
the moment, I also fail to see any benefit at all in using laptops in
mathematics education.

------
shittyanalogy
Not that laptops in the classroom are the solution, but in general we need to
change the teaching strategy in lower and higher education any way. We need
high-tech, 2014+ ready educational facilities, curricula and teaching
strategies. Laptops can certainly be distracting but trying to maintain the
status quo isn't going to benefit anyone.

~~~
BruceIV
Do you have some concrete suggestions? I personally think that the place for
high-tech solutions is for homework and maybe lab sections, not disrupting
lectures.

------
stefan_kendall3
I used class time mostly as a chance to VPN and work, for the scant amount of
time I was actually in class.

I did not give two shits about the lectures; the material is presented better
in the book. Professors, from my perspective, were paid to administer tests.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Then you'd have no trouble skipping lectures altogether, and spending the time
with your laptop in the library etc.

------
dangoldin
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 to do it, and second, that the Livingston parent community is
so enthusiastic about it.

There is no doubt that computers are useful and that the Internet gives access
to such a scope of information so quickly that is not available nor accessible
through any other means. But how do they impact children's overall
DEVELOPMENT? How do they impact their attention? With the pandemic of
Attention Deficit Disorder, how can we be so blind not to notice the
connection between children's attention span and the time they spend on the
computer? I started teaching piano more than 30 years ago. EVERY child was
capable to remember which note he had to play, with which finger, how to hold
the finger and whether he had to play long or short, loud or soft -
simultaneously. Now it is typical that when a child pays attention to what
note it is, he does not notice which finger; if he remembers the finger – does
not notice how loud, etc. I rarely see children that can actually focus on the
task for longer than 20 seconds. I often ask parents, “How much time does your
child spend on the computer?” The connection is direct: the less time on
computer – the better the student's focus, the longer she can concentrate on
the assignment. I happened to teach an elderly lady who brought a music book
with her teacher's remarks dated 1958. She was nervous, “Will you quit on me?
I forgot everything.” I answered (only half-jokingly), “Of course not, you are
my only student with a normal attention span!”

Even though I observe 400+ students in my music school, can it be just
coincidence? What does the beloved Internet tell us about the impact of
computer use has on the brain? Nothing encouraging. As an example, there is a
student work in biology
([http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/336](http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/336),
2007) that summarizes finding on the topic. It states what I suspected:
computers often conflict with the activities that are needed for one to
develop the ability to pay attention; the list of scientific works is attached
there. And if you still like long books, N. Carr addresses the issue in his
“The Shallows: What Internet is Doing to Our Brains.”

What are we doing? Are we trying to compensate for having poor teachers with
technology? Why do we adhere to such a naive belief that computers are the
solution to problems in schools, thinking that “the more of them - the better”
automatically? Maybe it's better to invest in teachers' training? Maybe we
need to raise the prestige of the teaching profession? I participated in a
“professional orientation” day in LHS several years ago. Seniors had an
opportunity to meet with representatives of their prospective field. I saw
crowds of seniors following “Lawyers” and “Accountants”. In the “Teachers”
room, a retired Harrison school teacher and myself, who were assigned to lead
the meeting, found 4 or 5 girls. Only one of them really wanted to be a
teacher, knew what is involved and why she wanted it. Everyone else said, “I
do not know”, “I am not sure”.. . Why do we expect our children will be
enthusiastic about learning if teachers themselves “do not know”?.. And how
computers can help?

The more that children use computers, the less opportunities they have for
human interaction. By increasing the role of computers in children's lives we
bend human nature, we consciously under-develop the younger generation; we
deprive our children of full development of their communication skills,
ability to build relationships, and their creativity. We are raising USERS,
not CREATORS. We are increasing the distance between those who are capable to
make discoveries and those who can chose from pre-made options; between people
who can see the beauty of the world and those for whom the world is limited by
the rectangle of the screen.

~~~
vitd
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.

