I tend to agree that laptops are as useful as pencil and paper depending on what you're doing.
As a college student, I have a few classes where using my laptop is far more efficient than using a pencil and paper. These classes are predominantly computer science and other areas without many formulas or diagrams. However, in math and engineering I tend to use paper because it's easier.
As for the argument that note taking using pencil and paper makes you better at notes, why does using a laptop have to be different? If you have good note taking skills, you can take down the same amount of information in a smaller time allowing you to be more involved with the lecture itself.
From experience I find that using my laptop saves me from falling behind, which allows me to keep up in lectures and thus I can be active and useful in discussions.
Sure this doesn't hold true for everyone, but what method does? With so many different learning styles and so many different teaching styles anyone that claims all education should be done using ONE theory is out of their mind. Some people learn by merely listening, others learn by physically doing things (labs), yet others learn by taking notes, and these three aren't the only groups of people. Just look at all of the "teaching philosophies" and it's easy to see that there is no one right way to do any of this.
In the end, the choice is up to the professor, but it's annoying when some professors made broad generalizations about students because their degree is in their field of study and not education. How we learn is individualized and something that should be taken strongly into account before anyone sits down and throws out a generalized statement about how this one act affects all of their students.
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I tend to agree that laptops are as useful as pencil and paper depending on what you're doing.
As a college student, I have a few classes where using my laptop is far more efficient than using a pencil and paper. These classes are predominantly computer science and other areas without many formulas or diagrams. However, in math and engineering I tend to use paper because it's easier.
As for the argument that note taking using pencil and paper makes you better at notes, why does using a laptop have to be different? If you have good note taking skills, you can take down the same amount of information in a smaller time allowing you to be more involved with the lecture itself.
From experience I find that using my laptop saves me from falling behind, which allows me to keep up in lectures and thus I can be active and useful in discussions.
Sure this doesn't hold true for everyone, but what method does? With so many different learning styles and so many different teaching styles anyone that claims all education should be done using ONE theory is out of their mind. Some people learn by merely listening, others learn by physically doing things (labs), yet others learn by taking notes, and these three aren't the only groups of people. Just look at all of the "teaching philosophies" and it's easy to see that there is no one right way to do any of this.
In the end, the choice is up to the professor, but it's annoying when some professors made broad generalizations about students because their degree is in their field of study and not education. How we learn is individualized and something that should be taken strongly into account before anyone sits down and throws out a generalized statement about how this one act affects all of their students.