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Professors Banning Laptops In the Lecture Hall

Posted by kdawson on from the read-my-lips dept.

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?'"

7 of 664 comments (clear)

  1. Re:False analogy. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    And remember, no margin, no Fermat's Last Theorem!

  2. Re:False analogy. by dwarfsoft · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yeah, he should have gone with a car analogy instead...

    --
    Cheers, Chris
  3. Well... by scross · · Score: 5, Funny

    I bet there's someone in a lecture reading this right now.

  4. Re:False analogy. by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 5, Funny

    I believe that this would happen in a slightly different fashion today. "I have discovered a truly marvelous proof that all non-trivial zeros of the Riemann zeta function have a real part of 1/2, but the landing zone of my Macbook's hard drive is too narrow to contain the TeX file."

    --
    Ezekiel 23:20
  5. Re:This is College by beakerMeep · · Score: 4, Funny

    You sound like Alliance.

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    meep
  6. Re:False analogy. by frenchbedroom · · Score: 4, Funny

    I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter (provided it includes drawings of monkeys and hunters, of course)

  7. Re:False analogy. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Nah: "I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, but Twitter 140 chars lolol"