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“(I have been told, though I have not confirmed this, that Harvard Business School bans laptops and has turned off wireless connections in classrooms. I also heard an unconfirmed story that the Kennedy School Student Government had considered requesting that laptops/mobile devices be banned, but in the end didn’t do so.)”

Another new semester, another lap around the laptops in the classroom issue.

Steve Kelman, of Harvard’s Kennedy School, writes a pretty sensible post about them. He tells us, in a parenthetical whisper, of rumors involving this or that entire school banning them… Universities will increasingly ban them, for all the obvious reasons Kelman cites and more (they keep you from paying attention and learning anything; they distract the students around you; they are seriously rude, etc., etc.); but for now most schools are shilly-shallying. They know how horrible mobile devices are in class, but they’re afraid of pissing off students if they ban them… and, after all, it makes the schools feel like idiots to have spent so much money and rhetoric on the glories of classroom laptops and now to have to admit that they invested their money and their rhetoric unwisely.

But do not fail to note that in Kelman’s second example the pressure is coming from the students themselves. They know more intimately than professors just how these devices are being used, and if they have a smidgeon of intellectual seriousness they want them out of their faces.

Here’s Kelman’s policy, as stated on his syllabi:

In class, use of laptops to take notes is fine. However, use of laptops in class to check e-mail, surf the Web, use Facebook or Twitter, text, etc. [is] unprofessional and disrespectful to everyone in the classroom. All mobile devices must be switched off during class.

(He uses “mobile devices” to cover iPhones.)

The problem with this policy is that almost no one will follow it; so Kelman has condemned himself to life as a policeman.

Margaret Soltan, August 25, 2011 4:08PM
Posted in: technolust

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3 Responses to ““(I have been told, though I have not confirmed this, that Harvard Business School bans laptops and has turned off wireless connections in classrooms. I also heard an unconfirmed story that the Kennedy School Student Government had considered requesting that laptops/mobile devices be banned, but in the end didn’t do so.)””

  1. ima Says:
    August 26th, 2011 at 9:39AM

    Good news, but how do we keep these devices out of our elementary schools? And, don’t even get me started on the PowerPoint “presentation” my daughter made in FIRST GRADE!

  2. bfa Says:
    August 26th, 2011 at 11:17AM

    this is year 2 of my laptop ban. year 1 went without a hitch- nobody complained, they just bought notebooks and got on with their lives. I anticipate much the same this year.

  3. I should have seen this coming. « More or Less Bunk Says:
    August 26th, 2011 at 3:04PM

    […] Coincidentally, UD gets at the heart of the problem here. Eco World Content From Across The Internet. Featured on EcoPressed 13-Year-Old Designs […]

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