Okay, so they surveyed 100 college students. Of gamers I know in college, a very large percentage tend to be engineers, and many of those tend to be Asian American...and speak a second language because of their heritage...and very likely came from families that really emphasized math and sciences. Most "mental tests" tend to lean in favor of that population.
Why does doing other things have to be bad anyway? I can't tell you how many large CS Lectures that I've been to where I'll turn around an find half the class asleep, and some snoring. I mean, let's face it, a LOT of lectures are very very boring. There's a good chunk of us sleep deprived student who, without wireless, would be asleep, or zoned-out in class and oblivious to the lecture at hand anyway. At least now we look awake and at least hearing the sounds coming from the professor's mouths.
I am actually currently taking Geri Gay's Comm 440 class at Cornell University (the one that did the research that was cited) and she actually brought this up in class last Tuesday. She mentioned that in an experiement they had two sets of students--one set that took notes on paper and one set that "took notes" with a laptop. The group that used the laptop did indeed have internet access surf the net and whatever else, but when these two groups were quizzed on the lecture material at the end of class, they performed equally well, but the group with the laptop had a more enjoyable experience.
Enjoyability is a pretty big factor. I consider it a better use of my time to skip class (and do whatever else) then to attend boring lectures. But wifi allows me to turn the classroom into my room (Sort of), which actually increased my classroom attendence. Plus, there have been a number of classes where it helped to have wireless because I was able to look things up. And seriously, all those references that Professors tell us to look up if you're interested? If I wrote it down, I'd forget it by the time I get home anyway, at least I can look up things while the context is at hand.
Plus, think of the channels it could open up in teaching. I once had a physics class where their idea of interactive teaching was to have exercises in class and have people "vote" on multipe choice answers with a keypad in front of them. This was actually pretty effective, because more people did the exercise if they had to vote, and more people voted when it was anonymous. But the keypads were limiting since there were only 4 choices. Think of what wireless internet could do in that case. Frankly, I think it would also encourage more people to ask questions, considering the greatest problem with asking question in class is the possibility of looking stupid. Wireless would allow for anonymity.
Seriously, I don't see how wireless in the classroom is a bad thing. The guy playing Zelda in class would've zone out anyway. And the guys checking emails probably are getting as much out of lecture as they would've in the first place.
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Okay, so they surveyed 100 college students. Of gamers I know in college, a very large percentage tend to be engineers, and many of those tend to be Asian American...and speak a second language because of their heritage...and very likely came from families that really emphasized math and sciences. Most "mental tests" tend to lean in favor of that population.
Why does doing other things have to be bad anyway? I can't tell you how many large CS Lectures that I've been to where I'll turn around an find half the class asleep, and some snoring. I mean, let's face it, a LOT of lectures are very very boring. There's a good chunk of us sleep deprived student who, without wireless, would be asleep, or zoned-out in class and oblivious to the lecture at hand anyway. At least now we look awake and at least hearing the sounds coming from the professor's mouths.
I am actually currently taking Geri Gay's Comm 440 class at Cornell University (the one that did the research that was cited) and she actually brought this up in class last Tuesday. She mentioned that in an experiement they had two sets of students--one set that took notes on paper and one set that "took notes" with a laptop. The group that used the laptop did indeed have internet access surf the net and whatever else, but when these two groups were quizzed on the lecture material at the end of class, they performed equally well, but the group with the laptop had a more enjoyable experience.
Enjoyability is a pretty big factor. I consider it a better use of my time to skip class (and do whatever else) then to attend boring lectures. But wifi allows me to turn the classroom into my room (Sort of), which actually increased my classroom attendence. Plus, there have been a number of classes where it helped to have wireless because I was able to look things up. And seriously, all those references that Professors tell us to look up if you're interested? If I wrote it down, I'd forget it by the time I get home anyway, at least I can look up things while the context is at hand.
Plus, think of the channels it could open up in teaching. I once had a physics class where their idea of interactive teaching was to have exercises in class and have people "vote" on multipe choice answers with a keypad in front of them. This was actually pretty effective, because more people did the exercise if they had to vote, and more people voted when it was anonymous. But the keypads were limiting since there were only 4 choices. Think of what wireless internet could do in that case. Frankly, I think it would also encourage more people to ask questions, considering the greatest problem with asking question in class is the possibility of looking stupid. Wireless would allow for anonymity.
Seriously, I don't see how wireless in the classroom is a bad thing. The guy playing Zelda in class would've zone out anyway. And the guys checking emails probably are getting as much out of lecture as they would've in the first place.