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."

Comments

Re:Limiting Internet Access

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In all fairness, if im paying tuition, I want whats best for me, not only what I think I want at the moment. Do I want a future in what im interested, or a shit grade but all the erotic stories online.

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.