There’s a ridiculous posting over here in the Washington Post about college lecturers banning laptops in their classrooms. I haven’t got a lot of time to dissect the gross stupidity in this action, but here are a couple of points from the article:
Georgetown had only recently begun requiring that first-year law students own laptops, after painstakingly upgrading the campus for wireless Internet access.
So everyone’s obliged to buy one, but nobody’s allowed to use one… go figure, as I believe they say over there… Then there’s:
“This is like putting on every student’s desk, when you walk into class, five different magazines, several television shows, some shopping opportunities and a phone, and saying, ‘Look, if your mind wanders, feel free to pick any of these up and go with it,’ ” Cole said.
So we have the same old thing – obviously students are obliged to have a laptop, but college professors don’t know how to take advantage of them in their lessons, so the students use them for other purposes. And if the education they’re getting were actually stimulating and interesting, perhaps their ‘minds’ wouldn’t ‘wander’ so much. People have always been distracted in class – this is like blaming bullying on technology. New ways of doing old things. Perhaps if the professors were more engaging, this wouldn’t be happening. And maybe it’s natural selection, too – perhaps those who play around and browse YouTube will get worse marks, flunk out and do everyone a favour by not taking a job someone else deserves more.
Perhaps my favourite quote from this is the following:
One recent semester, Siebert tracked the grades of 17 student laptop addicts. At the end of the term, their average grade was 71 percent, “almost the same as the average for the students who didn’t come at all.”
So what we’re saying here is that the teaching materials are so interesting, stimulating and demanding that you can stay at home for the entire course and get 71%. What kind of thing are these people teaching? It beggars belief, it really does… Kind of all reminds me of this video:
The stat about students getting 71% from a course by not going to it sums up just about everything that needs to be said about this decision.
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What Jason said. That’s bloody ridiculous
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The last time I considered banning cell phones from my class was when I mistakenly suggested that the student using hers should be working with her partner on their presentation, only to have her show me she was using the dictionary on the device. Unless there is disruptive use or evidence that using electronic devices in class has a negative impact on more than just the user him/herself, teachers should check their egos at the door a pay attention to their jobs.
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I DREAM of having a class in which every student has a wireless ready laptop! We do what we can with the cellphones – handy for wikipedia, email, but a little limited. Otherwise, it’s a pre-booked visit to “the computer room”.
Dumbass lecturers don’t know they’re born!
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It’s strange that college authorities never questioned the quality of their prfessors’/lecturers’ teaching but blamed it all on the laptops.
The key word in this item is “lecturer”; this news item doesn’t make sense to people from EFL/ESL who come from a tradition of interactive, learner-centred classrooms.
In the US and many other countries, including where I come from, the paradigm of the university or college lecturer is of someone who actually just lectures and then asks some questions.
So a laptop is obviously no use to them and many of them would not know how to ask their students to use it in an engaging way.
If I had a laptop in such a lecture hall and couldn’t send tweets to all of you out there, I would probably nod off…
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To be fair, I did a history degree and lectures were a very effective way of transmitting information to lots of us fairly efficiently.
We had no laptops, but we had plenty of other ways of amusing ourselves if the lectures were boring. It’s not hard to read a magazine, to doodle, to whisper jokes… there were lectures in which this happened, and others in which it didn’t. All down to the professor, of course!
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Interestingly, on our delta course the year before last, the tutors, having been asked, allowed us to have laptops open on the desks, for note-taking.
I chose to scribble in my notebook (the paper one) and on the handouts we were given, as I felt that I would be distracted by my laptop. Others wanted to write notes in a word doc as things were being discussed.
Interestingly, at the start of the course, the laptops were indeed being used for note-taking, though as the weeks went by emailing, browsing and working on assignments began to creep in and everybody noticed. The tutors must have noticed, but nothing was ever said, maybe they didn’t mind. I think it would have annoyed me had I been in their position.
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This is a great post. I also believe that the technology is a smaller problem compared to many others if something goes wrong in the classroom. Often people blame technology for more fundamental issues, ignoring the need to change the teaching methods and competing messages (such as lectures from Academic Earth). I wrote a paper for Educause on this topic:
http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Quarterly/EDUCAUSEQuarterlyMagazineVolum/FromDistractiontoEngagementWir/192959
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Love the sarcasm of the post
It gave me lots of pleasant moments of laughing 
However, it’s not the only case of such behaviour – in the school where I’m teaching right now (London) it’s not allowed to use phones, and they think that language assistants do not need speakers for their computer. So I had to ask for permission to use my cell phone in order I could play a piece of authentic audio which was really relevant to the topic…
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Folks,
Just back from TESOL Arabia, hence my slowness… Whatever we try to ban will end up being used, without or involvement. Better, then, to be involved, IMHO. The use Richard cites (taking notes) seems to me pointless if you have paper and apen handy. Involving tutors and learners in the use of tech seems the only real way to go. If you’re note-taking, what’s the point? Thanks for the link to the paper, Berlin – it’s bookmarked for later reading!
Best,
Gavin
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Great blog Gavin have added to my blogroll – totally agree with the points above re dont ban useful tools just because students use them unexpectedly – instead think why that might be and incorporate those insights into your approach! Cheers MauriceCFlynn
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