
I’m Banning Laptops from My Classroom - dwynings
http://www.wsj.com/articles/im-banning-laptops-from-my-classroom-1468184264
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mto
People at University are grown ups, not school children. If they decide to
ignore the lectures and still pass the exams, fine. If they fail, it's their
own problem. I also think, attendance should never be mandatory. You should
learn to reach your goals in a way that's best for you, not obediently sitting
in classrooms. Of course, this is difficult for the ego of the lecturers who
could often just be replaced by recordings, because they repeat their
monologue word by word year after year, including the jokes. Recordings
actually have big advantages anyway: you can pause them if you require time to
think about something, you can play them faster for endless statements of
obvious stuff and you can take a break when your brain needs it.

I loved university back then, but the learning could have certainly been much
more efficient (e.g. some lectures are fine, lectures for 6 hours straight are
not). Same with exercises - some have a clear teaching goal and you can really
benefit from them, others are a completely useless waste of time. Obviously
it's not easy for a new student to differentiate between them, but I think
figuring out how to best reach your learning goals by yourself is an important
part of studying. Not all people are equal, but the teaching is usually done
as if they were, so you have to give people the freedom to adapt the learning
experience for themselves. Even if that means watching hockey games in class
and reading the book during the night. It's a strategy. If it fails - you can
learn from it.

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kwhitefoot
Lectures are a very poor educational tool anyway. Facts can be delivered in
other ways leaving teaching time to concentrate on getting the students to
interact with their teachers. The Socratic method is much better but harder
work for both teacher and taught, although it is more efficient in the long
run.

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mankash666
Those who don't want to pay attention, won't do it without the laptop either.

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dazc
Maybe they don't think the are not paying attention? A lot of people just
think they can multi-task, even though they can't.

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unsignedint
I didn't read past their paywall but one of the reasons I would use a laptop
in that situation is purely because my handwriting is horrible to take a note.
I would be fairly frustrated with this policy for standpoint of that.

