I was a CS grad student just last year, and for two straight years I used a laptop in class. We had wifi too. None of that Harvard-style restrictions.
Aside from notetaking, laptops are good for: - Double checking facts. - Reviewing material that the professor thinks you know but don't. Trying to catch up is next to impossible. - Keeping yourself awake. CS professors tend to be ridiculously monotone. - Many professors publish PDFs of their lecture notes. Now use Acrobat Standard and you can annotate the notes. If you tell me to print the notes and annotate on paper, that don't work because some professors put up the PDFs online only 5 minutes before class starts.
There are reasons not to carry a laptop, but you all already mentioned them.
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I was a CS grad student just last year, and for two straight years I used a laptop in class. We had wifi too. None of that Harvard-style restrictions.
Aside from notetaking, laptops are good for:
- Double checking facts.
- Reviewing material that the professor thinks you know but don't. Trying to catch up is next to impossible.
- Keeping yourself awake. CS professors tend to be ridiculously monotone.
- Many professors publish PDFs of their lecture notes. Now use Acrobat Standard and you can annotate the notes. If you tell me to print the notes and annotate on paper, that don't work because some professors put up the PDFs online only 5 minutes before class starts.
There are reasons not to carry a laptop, but you all already mentioned them.