Class Action: Laptops Not Allowed
“Could you repeat the question?”
That’s the most common response law professor David Cole gets when he calls on disengaged students during class at Georgetown University. The question, Cole says, “is usually asked while the student glances up from the laptop screen that otherwise occupies his or her field of vision.”
The laptop—the favorite in-class tool for college and university students across the country—is coming unplugged.
When used responsibly—for taking notes or quickly accessing research—a laptop provides valuable educational support. But when used irresponsibly—for watching YouTube, surfing the web, emailing, IM-ing, playing games, checking sports scores, and shopping for shoes instead of engaging in class — laptops become the scourge of professors, some of whom are now banning them, especially in law schools.
“I was happy to compete with Minesweeper and solitaire,” said University of Michigan law professor Don Herzog, but not “the entire internet.” Herzog banned all laptops from his classes for a day, and was so “stunned by how much better the class was,” that he has vowed to make the embargo permanent in the fall.
Professor Herzog is not alone in his class action.
At Harvard, Yale, and Columbia, professors have nixed classroom laptops as well. At the University of Chicago Law School, classroom Wi-Fi was recently cut in response to an “epidemic” of web browsing. And at UCLA School of Law, when the meandering minds of the country’s future lawyers need to be jolted back from cyberspace to the Socratic method, professors can activate a “kill switch” to disable classroom Wi-Fi.
Many students disdain their professors’ attempts at online mind control, saying if classes weren’t so boring, they wouldn’t look for so many distractions. Ann Althouse, a professor from the University of Wisconsin Law School agrees with the students. “The idea that we’re going to somehow save these students from being distracted is a bit absurd,” she said. “Especially in law school, I’m on the side of individual responsibility and freedom.”
Tell us what you think: Should students be busted down for booting up in class? Should professors be responsible for making lectures and classes interesting enough to hold students’ attention? Do students have a responsibility to pay attention?
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Let them burn
I am currently a college student and I am against a ban on laptops. If other students want to fail, let them do so on their own. In fact, I would prefer it if other students took laptops to class and then did poorly. I can only see good things coming if more of my peers fail the material. Often times I find myself with over 100% in my classes these days because the class average is so low that the grade gets curved to someone below me. So please my peers, bring laptops, and fail the class. It’s because of people like you that I go into my finals without studying, knowing that my grade is so ridiculously high that I need to get worse than a 50% on the final just to get lower than a 93% in the class.
Anonymous | 1 year, 2 months ago
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The educational process
After a 20 year carer as a software engineer, I became a teacher. It is well to note that I was born in 1941, that I remember the first 9 inch TV that appeared in the living room and the years before that of listening to the radio for entertainment, and, most importantly, that I went through my entire educational career without a calculator or a laptop.
As a teacher, I have come to a set of conclusions around which I build and support my approach to my profession:
(1) Students are either self motivated to study and achieve, or they are not. I can only set a good example for them. After that, it is their problem.
(2) The hi tech world they live in provides a great many benefits. It also has a number of pitfalls that I have seen several students dive headfirst into despite my repeated warnings and encouragement to the contrary.
(3) That technology has an extremely high rate of obsolescence but the subject matter I teach, General Science and Math, have not changed in terms of method and content for centuries.
I cannot make Algebra per se interesting beyond possibly finding applications common to everyday life. Although I stress the application of General Science principals to something as common as driving a car, there are still rote basics that can only be learned and understood through drill and, God forbid, homework and personal research.
I have no problem with allowing calculators and/or laptops to class and expect the students will use those devices intelligently as tools, not escape devices designed to substitute for mental exercise.
I could mention several horror stories concerning students at the high school level who couldn’t handle basic arithmetic without a calculator and the parents of those students who assailed me and the Principal with complaints when I dared, in an Algebra course, to test that basic arithmetic knowledge without the use of calculators. I’ll leave that discussion for another time.
Pasquale Bottiglieri | 1 year, 1 month ago
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Useful laptop
I think a laptop is very useful for student. They can do their college or university work any place. Apart from that, they can use surfing net find some interesting things on the web. I think it’s useful. You can carry on any part of world.
sj | 1 year ago
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math teacher
I would agree with the professor. If the laptops are becoming a problem then they should be banned. I also feel we have taken the “class should be entertaining” slogan way to far. Classes should be engaging and challenging. Students should not need to be entertained all the time. Listen and learn to better yourself not to be entertained. I applaud the students that agreed with this professor. You show there is hope. Keep working hard and you will have a better future because of your efforts.
Wes | 1 year ago
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Technology teacher
One of the downfalls of using a laptop is the temptation to drift off into the World Wide Web and forget what you were originally supposed to be doing; like researching a fact that the instructor just commented on. Instead of looking for entertainment in the classroom, students should instead, be looking to see what they can take from the class and apply it to their lives or to another class. Instructors, also have to realize that students of today are not like the students of yesterday. This is the microwave age and keeping the attention of students is most definitely a challenge.
Anthony Lee | 1 year ago
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Graduate Adult Education
I am in agreement that students should be penalized for booting up during classes and held accountable for the material they have missed in the lecture. We do not need any more ill prepared attorneys in America. If they are not serious about their studies they certainly will never be serious about representing clients or business firms throughout America.
Patricia Edwards | 10 months, 3 weeks ago
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There are ups and downs.
Being a student at the Baltimore Actors Theater Conservatory, I am required to have a laptop. But when I am in class, I see my fellow students answering emails going on Myspace and Facebook etc.
I believe that students should use their laptops for certain classes, and not for every single class they have. If they are not responsible for their actions on their own computer, then they should not have a computer at all. Students should also know that a computer is a privilege, not a right. But there is the fact that, instead of carrying a huge binder to every class, that weighs more than you, you just carry a laptop that holds everything you need. In conclusion, there are ups and downs for using a laptop in class.
Jessica Preactor | 10 months, 1 week ago
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laptops baned! what?
I totally agree with professor Ann Althouse. If students are getting distracted it means something. 1 of 2 is happening 1 you teach your class by by talking all the time or 2 you are not putting enough effort for students to pay attention to what you are saying. Students want there lessons to be fun. If the lesson is fun and your class does more group work students learn more, because if they are interested in what they are learning they pay attention.
Guadalupe Ceballos | 7 months, 1 week ago
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"Come on" What's happening Here?"
Come on people! What’s happening here? School as I remember it, whether highschool or college , was most of the time boring. If you were looking for entertainment you were not going to find it in school. School is where you learn. You have to disapline(oops! excuse the spelling) your mind to focus. Not everything in life is interesting. Today, we are spoiling kids in to think that everything needs to be entertaining and a game. Have some self disapline(oops! excuse the spelling). The sooner kids know this the better. For you people out there that feel that education should always be fun, YOUR SPOILING THE KIDS. And hey, should a seminar and a buisness meeting always be fun? Think about it. (I may not have spelled everything here correctly, but I know what I’m talking about.)
Dan Marchioni | 4 months ago
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WHAT!!??
my class wouldn’t agree with you because laptops are a fun way to learn if my scool didn’t have laptops we would all be snoozing away on our desks. We seem to have alot of responsibility at my school and if you could see us you would most-likley agree!
Breanna Nicole Brown | 3 months, 3 weeks ago
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