Professors vs. WiFi

murky.waters writes "The New York Times (free registration, profiling) has an article about the opposing views of teacher's demanding attention and students seeking distraction; the current trend toward wireless Internet access in the classroom has students surfing the web and checking their email from the backrow, while instructors are climbing up the ladder... to disconnect the Access Point." Makarand writes "University Wi-Fi networks are heavily impacting student campus life according to this article on NewsObserver.com. In addition to allowing them to keep working while not in their computer labs, the wireless networks allow them to keep in touch with their family, better organize time, complete coursework in shorter periods of time, collaborate with other students and bring computing power into classrooms not available before."

Comments

Re:So whats the role of the professor that you pay

[Kombat]

Profs are not there to spoonfeed you. The real world doesn't spoon feed you. They are there to offer up the info on a silver platter, but you still must make the effort to reach out and grab it.

Colleges and universities don't owe you an education. They owe you access to information in a format optimal for learning. You still must actually do something to get it.

Virtually all of the info you'd learn in university is available in libraries and on the internet. So why then do companies still prefer people with little pieces of paper? Because actions speak louder than words. Any basement-dwelling sociopathic geek can SAY they could learn how to calculate the Big O of various fibonnacci algorithms, but the paper proves that this person actually did learn what he was asked to learn. And that demonstrates that he could learn virtually anything else you ask him do. He's already demonstrated that he's a do-er, a go-getter. He's the one who actually participated in classes and made the effort to really understand the course material.

And that doesn't just mean paying attention in class - that means actually putting in effort outside of the classroom.