Comments on: It’s not the laptop, it’s the web.

By: sam

sam — Wed, 10 May 2006 07:22:15 +0000

Laptops bring with them not just web alone but other distracting things also. Then whats the use of it when its distrubing students attention. But its depends from person to person in which way they r making the use. Its all upto them.

By: tom

tom — Tue, 09 May 2006 05:51:20 +0000

I think its the matter of personal choice. Some r comfortable with it and others r not.Laptops should not be totally banned from the classrooms. Technology can be put to best use if the students r at ease with it. Otherwise it don’t make any sense.

By: michael

michael — Fri, 05 May 2006 19:32:08 +0000

Speaking as a student in law school classes, I have a hard time with laptops in class. Not because people get online, but because they do extraordinarily distracting things. Here are some examples of what I have seen: Playing videogames — ranging from Civ4 to Nintendo emulators to flash games to whatever — watching movies (someone in front of me watched most of Batman Begins with the subtitles on), playing pinball and POUNDING the keyboard. Those things really bother me and distract me from either an interesting lecture or discussion in which I’d like to participate. None of them hinge on students getting online.

It doesn’t matter the teacher’s style — having had Mike Madison, he does a good job with incorporating online activity into the class lecture where appropriate — or the quality of the instruction or material because many students screw off no matter what. And their actions can and will distract other students. My point, ultimately, is that internet access isn’t the lynchpin of student attention span. And there’s only so much that the professor can do. Frankly, as a student, I’d rather see laptops banned outright from the classroom.

By: Mike Madison

Mike Madison — Fri, 05 May 2006 17:12:31 +0000

Joe,
Well, you know I’m a theory guy, but it’s easy to leave the theory at home. Maybe ‘go with the flow’ is less meta but sends a similar message. I can’t shake a different feeling: resistance is futile!
Mike

By: Joe Miller

Joe Miller — Thu, 04 May 2006 20:23:24 +0000

Mike,
I’ll take your experience (which I thank you for sharing) as a way to make lemonade. I can’t shake the feeling, however, that ubitquitous web access during class is a lemon.
To be clear, I don’t ban laptops in class. I welcome them, although not (at least, not yet) for the “teaching moment” reason you describe. (I don’t mind the picket fence problem, and I think students should use whatever reasonable notetaking technology they think best.)
Next fall, I’ll give your method a try. At the moment, it strikes me as a little too “meta” for my personal taste, but it’s surely worth a shot.
Joe

By: Mike Madison

Mike Madison — Thu, 04 May 2006 20:13:13 +0000

Joe,
I haven’t read all of the commentary on this, but most of what I have read puzzles me, in the following respect: There is an unspoken premise that what the students are “doing” in the classroom is functionally independent of what the teacher is “doing.” Students may be taking notes, or IM’ing or surfing, or napping; they are in class “to learn,” and they are succeeding or failing at that task. The teacher is lecturing, or pursuing Q&A, but by all accounts “teaching,” which means “trying to create an environment that’s conducive to learning” and conveying certain information to the students. I don’t see much commentary that proceeds from the premise that students and teacher form an interdependent classroom system (which becomes an extra-classroom system, if you get a little fancy) that’s designed for information exchange and circulation.
That sounds both awfully abstract and idealistic. What difference might this make? The fact that some students surf or IM or ruthlessly transcribe every word (assuming that this is a bad thing) is more than merely a form of feedback on the teacher’s ability to hold their interest. It’s a form of raw material for teaching. The students are teaching the teacher; the teacher can use it to teach the students. This doesn’t work well if one’s preferred teaching style is the lecture, but it does work well if the teacher is regularly and enthusiastically engaged with what the students are actually doing — not simply with what the (responsive) students are saying. So, I don’t ban laptops in my classrooms, partly because I share the objection that this sort of policy is a bit paternalistic, but mostly because I’ve found that if I actually pay attention to the students who are plugged in (and yes, without much effort it’s usually easy to tell who they are, even if I’m not looking over their shoulders), I can mine information that I can work into the class as a whole. I listen for murmurs and watch for finger-pointing that indicates that someone has surfed to a website or received a message of possible interest. I call the student out, not with hostility, but with an invitation: share what you found. With me. If it’s on topic, I work it into the class conversation. If it’s off topic or inappropriate, I can joke and move on (or criticize and move on). In either case, I’ve forged a tiny bond, or planted a seed, that I can use later. In both cases, the student is part of the teaching process, not simply there as a learner.
Mike

By: MT

MT — Thu, 04 May 2006 18:39:38 +0000

Perhaps each class should have a live chat running and projected at the front of the class. Then no matter which distraction grabs them, it’s relevant. Also they could post questions rather than distract themselves with raising their one of the typing hands to get attention or trying to keep it in mind to ask later. I bet you’d get more and better questions. If a student’s login is always beside the question, then you can still address and interact with that student socratically even if the initial spark is online. Also the online questions that remain unanswered you could answer online after class.

By: MT

MT — Thu, 04 May 2006 18:29:55 +0000

What about Internet access just for the back row of students?