An administrator at Lehigh discusses laptops in class.
“It all depends on what the teacher is trying to accomplish,” [Greg] Reihman said. “Some faculty members want increased attention in front of the room so if the presence of laptops becomes a distraction, I understand the banning of them.”
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Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
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George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
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Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog
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Dissent: The Blog
[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
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Perplexed with Narrow Passages
Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
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Money Law
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Tenured Radical
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More magazine, Canada
If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte
February 21st, 2011 at 1:50PM
Not all learning has to be teacher-centered. For those of us who practice student-centered learning (especially in Foreign Language teaching), decreased attention in front of the room is, indeed, a crucial goal.
February 21st, 2011 at 2:40PM
You’ll have to clarify that for me, Clarissa. Foreign language instruction, more than many other forms, seems to me profoundly about the teacher. Students must watch the teacher at the front of the room with great intensity, and must verbally interact with her – and their fellow students – throughout the hour.
If you’re talking about sticking students in front of computers with foreign language software on them, then certainly they shouldn’t be looking at the front of the room. No need for a human teacher at all. Same deal if you break them up into groups, have them try to talk to each other in the language, and occasionally, as their instructor, drift by and see how things are going. This isn’t really a language teacher at all. An assistant, rather.
If you’re talking about a class in which the teacher is sort of a master or mistress of ceremonies, welcoming the students to the computer room and hanging around if needed, then, again, you’re not really talking about a teacher.
Teachers who know and love languages, and whose classes are intense and fully human engagements in that language, are what students deserve. Laptops are especially deadly in the language classroom.