Slashdot Mirror
Is Wi-Fi Ruining College?
theodp writes "Over at Slate, Avi Zenilman has seen the real classroom of the future firsthand: Students use class time to read the Drudge Report, send e-mail, play Legend of Zelda, or update profiles on Facebook.com. But not to worry - replace laptops with crumpled notes, and the classroom of the future looks a lot like the classroom of the past." From the article: "... when Cornell University researchers outfitted classrooms with wireless Internet and monitored students' browsing habits, they concluded, 'Longer browsing sessions during class tend to lead to lower grades, but there's a hint that a greater number of browsing sessions during class may actually lead to higher grades.' It seems a bit of a stretch to impute a causal relationship, but it's certainly possible that the kind of brain that can handle multiple channels of information is also the kind of brain that earns A's."
What do you think of something like this monitor filter? Maybe make it required for students who wish to use their laptops. Seems like most of the time, the laptop users would prefer this anyway; I know on the few occasions I've had a laptop in a lecture setting (conferences, not schools, but basically the same thing) the laptop wasn't distracting, but the ability of other people to read my screen made me uncomfortable, even though I was doing innocuous things.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
If you have so little self-control that you can't keep yourself from wasting time on the Internet every chance you get, you're probably better off not being in school anyway.