A professor at Cal State Fullerton explains his no-laptop policy. You learn when you focus your mind. Pretty obvious.
This professor also complains about… professors.
I’ve been in meetings and watched professors do other things on their laptop, and it is distracting to me. Students are not the only ones who do it.
It’s so rude. You might at least expect professors to know better.
Trackback URL for this post:
https://www.margaretsoltan.com/wp-trackback.php?p=30062
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.
New York Times
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.
The Electron Pencil
It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo
There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub
You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann
Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog
University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog
[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal
Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education
[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University
Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University
The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog
Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
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...
Outside the Beltway
From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law
University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association
The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog
I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes
As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls
Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical
University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life
[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
More magazine, Canada
If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte
April 8th, 2011 at 7:08AM
I remember one of my more senior colleagues posting his Facebook status during a workshop he was running, “[Senior colleague] thinks [Other senior colleague] should pay attention to the talks and get off [Facebook].” I didn’t see this until 5 hours later. Of course, Other senior colleague “liked” this.
April 8th, 2011 at 8:41AM
http://being.publicradio.org/programs/2011/alive-enough/
April 8th, 2011 at 8:52AM
I’ve seen the laptop stuff happen at conferences. It’s very, very distracting to sit behind someone who’s noodling around on the internet, EVEN IF it’s a fascinating talk you want to hear.
And also, I think it’s disrespectful to the speaker. If you don’t want to hear the talk in that session, go out into the hall and leave a seat open for someone who wants to.
I do not permit laptops in my class unless the student has a demonstrated disability. (I had a student with a motor skills issue, for whom typing was faster and more accurate than writing…but when they used the laptop, it was open to a word-processing program and they were typing notes.)
April 9th, 2011 at 7:33AM
The absolute worst offenders? No, not sorority girls.
Administrators. Gilligan pays for the shiniest new toys for the administrative class. They play with them endlessly during meetings. Members of enemy administrative duchies and marquisates ostentatiously stop paying attention and start texting when someone from the other side starts to talk.