A reporter from the George Washington University student newspaper came by today and asked me questions about my no laptops thing. To prepare for the interview (UD prepares) I read Georgetown Law professor David Cole on the subject. He bans laptops for two reasons:
1. They turn students into stenographers rather than note-takers.
2. They distract the student with the laptop, who spends a good deal of time using it for non-class purposes; they also distract students who aren’t using laptops but can’t help looking at the screens around the room, which might be showing basketball games, porn films, etc.
The GW Hatchet article about this should come out on Monday; if I’m quoted, I’ll link to it.
Meanwhile, here’s some weird shit.
… Ohio State University law professor Douglas A. Berman isn’t bothered by what his students do in class. If students want to play poker or watch porn during class, so be it, he says, though he knows his opinion is out of the mainstream.
“I have students who don’t come to class. I have students who are paying attention and say dumb things. But so be it,” Berman says.
Berman’s only concern is when one student’s behavior distracts another’s learning experience. It is a lesson he learned all too well when sitting in on a colleague’s evidence lecture during the March NCAA basketball tournament.
“I noticed a student’s laptop with the basketball scores on the screen,” he says. “I got distracted looking at the scores.”
He doesn’t think a student watching porn distracts other students? And… I dunno… the whole I don’t care what they do rhetoric makes me wonder… The way he says it – it sounds like a boast. So take the porn — what’s that going to turn into? Say you’ve got five guys in the back of the lecture hall clustering around a naughty movie, plus a bunch of others scattered about pleasuring themselves on private screens… What’s that gonna be like? Heavy breathing, orgasmic groans. But so be it.
November 6th, 2009 at 9:16PM
Oh, boy…
One of the reasons I’ve stopped reading Ann Althouse’s blog is I always have the feeling that she enjoys throwing pieces of red meat over the fence and watching the dogs fight over it…
I sometimes feel that way about UD’s technology posts.
There is a helluva big difference between someone using a laptop for taking notes and students in a classroom masturbating. Hello?
I often take my notebook to scientific lectures and enjoy taking notes and often checking out things that puzzle me – in real time – during the lecture.
I’ve also asked students in class to check out what’s on the internet about certain things that come up where I have no idea.
Come on, UD.
PUH-LEEZE?
November 7th, 2009 at 8:58AM
Back before the campus got wifi, before cheap laptops, our laboratory classes used desktop computers hardwired to routers. I ran an extension cord with a power switch from the router closet to the teacher’s workstation. With a quiet flick of a switch, I could shut down the router, ending access to the inter-tubes.