Professors Banning Laptops In the Lecture Hall

Pickens writes "The Washington Post reports that professors have banned laptops from their classrooms at George Washington University, American University, the College of William and Mary, and the University of Virginia, among many others, compelling students to take notes the way their parents did: on paper. A generation ago, academia embraced the laptop as the most welcome classroom innovation since the ballpoint pen, but during the past decade it has evolved into a powerful distraction as wireless Internet connections tempt students away from note-typing to e-mail, blogs, YouTube videos, sports scores, even online gaming. Even when used as glorified typewriters, laptops can turn students into witless stenographers, typing a lecture verbatim without listening or understanding. 'The breaking point for me was when I asked a student to comment on an issue, and he said, "Wait a minute, I want to open my computer,"' says David Goldfrank, a Georgetown history professor. 'And I told him, "I don't want to know what's in your computer. I want to know what's in your head."' Some students don't agree with the ban. A student wrote in the University of Denver's newspaper: 'The fact that some students misuse technology is no reason to ban it. After all, how many professors ban pens and notebooks after noticing students doodling in the margins?'"

Comments

What's next? Burkas?

[popo]

I think I speak for all the men here, when I say that there's nothing more distracting on Earth than a beautiful 19 year old girl in a tank top and a short skirt...

If the school is going to exercise severe administrative paternalism and attempt to remove all of life's distractions from the classroom, will they be forcing female students to wear burkas next?

Re:good move

[ElectricTurtle]

Technology does not hinder education, people hinder themselves. Tools are amoral. The have no character, no conscience. Those people you observed were not the captives of their computers, forced to play games. They chose to do that, and they are adults, responsible for their decisions and their outcomes. It is not up to professors to save people from themselves. Laptops improved my efficacy in both high school and college, if their use diminished others' efficacy, it is up to those people to restrain themselves, rather than indirectly causing my own efficacy to be reduced. If they fail from a lazy and deficient character, they have punished themselves. There is no need to punish or restrain others without problems for the mistakes of those with problems.

Re:good move

[ElectricTurtle]

You want others to save you from yourself, at the cost of the freedom of your peers who may not share your deficiencies. How noble. No doubt you love the trend government has taken over the last few decades.

Re:False analogy.

[ElectricTurtle]

You're comparing laptop use in class to texting while driving? Really? Either way, it does not negate the ethical foundation. You make a mistake and you pay for it. In class that means you fail, in a car that means damage, injury or death, and criminal liability. You are correct that texting is viable to be banned because the outcome of a failure affects others non-voluntarily. When somebody texts while driving and crashes, the person they crash into can't say 'no, don't crash into me' and have that crash not happen.

This is where your analogy fails when you try to say "you might get away with playing Facebook games indefinitely, but you're more likely to or cause someone else to miss an import point". That other person using Facebook or whatever does so voluntarily. Both people are voluntary actors, both have the same decision to make, and if one person's efficacy is diminished more than the other, that does not transfer responsibility/liability to the the first voluntary actor.

Your anecdote only demonstrates your own sensitivity. You also were able to adapt rather than force somebody to accommodate your sensitivity at the cost of their freedom and potential efficacy (some are improved, others are reduced, depending on their character and how they use the tool, not the amoral tool itself).

Your cute pithy conclusion is fraught with personal bias. You judge that because your experience and methodology allowed you to succeed, no other competing methodology is able to succeed. Because some others failed using a different methodology, you assume all others must necessarily fail based on your anecdotal experience. You need to be more wary of such conceited reasoning.