Slashdot Mirror
Professor Bans Laptops from the Classroom
An anonymous reader writes "USAToday is reporting that students are up in arms over a University of Memphis Professor who has decided to ban laptops from her classroom. Earlier this month Professor Entman sent an email warning to her students to bring paper and pens to take notes and leave the laptops at home. From the article: '"My main concern was they were focusing on trying to transcribe every word that was I saying, rather than thinking and analyzing," Entman said Monday. "The computers interfere with making eye contact. You've got this picket fence between you and the students."'"
People should just take audio recordings of lectures instead. Then you can automate transcription. If you record video or snapshots of the white/black board then you're really covered. At that point, you can fully involve yourself with the lecture, without having to worry about the risk of failing to record something you'll need to pass the final. Every school should encourage this.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Back in 1996 I was one of the rare students that actually owned a laptop computer. Good old Compaq P133 with a whopping 24MB of RAM. w00t!
:\
I got in trouble though. You see, at least 3 of my profs wanted us to not only keep notebooks, but turn those notebooks in at intervals for review. WTF?
So...I saved them all was word documents, and turned them in as a zip file. The profs were note amused.
They wanted sprial-bound notebook and handwriting. How could I prove my notes were my own otherwise?
I had to take it to the school's administration and finally they accepted my notes...begrudgingly. I wound up failing one of the classes however because my notes were not..."lengthy" enough? It seems that despite I type faster than I can handwrite (and I can actually ready my typing later!), my notes seemed shorter and smaller because well, they WERE smaller. I was using a variable-width font, about 10 point to be exact. I was so mad. I told her to count letters or words if she must to compare against other students, but to no avail. I think more than anything she wanted to make an example out of me.
Seems I was actually just way ahead of the curve and getting bushwhacked for it.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
Perhaps not the laptop, but the guy in front of me's screen saver in multi-variable calc was certainly distracting.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
If I had owned a laptop, I would have been tempted to use it to record what was said in class while I used paper and pencil to take notes.
I used to know a lawyer who as a law student modified a briefcase so he could conceal a tape recorder to tape his law school classes in the early 70's. From the tapes, he would the lectures to paper and then sell copies of the transcribed lectures to other students. While he was at work making deliveries, he would listen to the tapes instead of the radio as he drove.
He would lead a discussion of the topic by prompting questions and answers from the students. During the discussion, he would create (on the chalkboard) a running outline of the topics with some details, but not EVERYTHING we talked about. As he wrote on the board, we students wrote in our notebooks, and then went back to the discussion.
I learned more from this method than any other I have used since.
Mr. U., your teaching methods kicked ass!
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
Why would you want a laptop to record what was said? A micro recorder is cheaper and doesn't weigh as much. I never bothered to conceal it ether. I just walked into class and set it on the desk. I would use it later that night to review the notes I had taken.
Personally, I would never bother to carry a laptop to school unless I had all the books in pdf, or some other format, on it. I was averaging between 20 and 30 pounds of books between classes. Adding another 6 to 10 pounds? No thanks.
To bad someone can't come out with a nice ebook reader about the size of a good text book, a standard ebook format for all the books, and sell it for under 200 bucks.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
My ego? Get a grip - most professors' salaries are pathetic compared to what they could make in industry. You don't go into academia because of ego, you either do it because you love research for the sake of knowledge, or you love teaching.
My aunt once told me that teachers have the biggest egos in the world; I found it rather interesting that she would say this, because she was an English teacher for more than 20 years. However my recent personal experience has supported this. I got a new boss not too long ago and couldn't seem to get along with him no matter how hard I tried, which was something I'd never experienced before. Every time I disagreed with him on a technical issue, he would get so mad you could practically see steam shooting out of his ears. I explained the situation to a friend of mine who worked as a project manager for another company and he asked me to tell him about my new boss. I said, "Well, he's done some programming, some management, and he teaches programming part time at the local university."
"Hold it right there", my friend said. "Every time I've had to work with someone who came out of a university teaching environment, it was very difficult. The reason why is because they come from an environment where they're always right."
He had hit the nail right on the head.
Realizing what type of person I was dealing with, I backed off and quietly tried to just do my job. However after about a month of him constantly looking over my shoulder, rushing me, and criticizing my work, he got what he wanted: I made a mistake on a project. He then pulled me into the VP's office and wrote me up for "poor performance". I then told the VP that I wanted to go back to my old department (a demotion which I gladly accepted), and have since been working happily for a nice boss who has a strong technical background and, more importantly, a laid back personality.
Lesson learned.