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“How can the university justify making some poor professor stand up there and be ignored for four whole months?”

They can’t justify it. But they can allow the poor professor to ban laptops and other devices. That would help immensely.

*******************

Colin, a UD reader, reminds UD that the author of the article I’ve linked to was at a tender age diagnosed with “Written Output Disorder,” a condition which made it mandatory that he use laptops in all classrooms. Colin questions the diagnosis, so UD looked it up.

I’m afraid the author of the article is being a bit irresponsible. There are, first of all, at least five kinds of WOD (aka Dysgraphia), and the author would have been more persuasive had he specified his particular subdisorder, since not all seem to necessitate giving up the act of writing with your hands.

Further, experts seem to agree that therapies for all forms of this disorder exist, which suggests that the author’s parents were a mite overhasty when they decided to allow their son – at the age of ten – to abandon the effort to make his fingers form letters.

Margaret Soltan, January 10, 2012 8:00PM
Posted in: technolust

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5 Responses to ““How can the university justify making some poor professor stand up there and be ignored for four whole months?””

  1. Colin Says:
    January 11th, 2012 at 8:40AM

    “Written Output Disorder”? Diagnosed in the fourth grade?

  2. Margaret Soltan Says:
    January 11th, 2012 at 8:47AM

    Colin: I know! I can’t believe I didn’t feature that in the post! Thanks for the reminder. I’ll rewrite …

  3. Mike S. Says:
    January 11th, 2012 at 12:39PM

    Written output disorder, it’s just as much of a joke as its sibling, discalculia.

  4. theprofessor Says:
    January 12th, 2012 at 4:27PM

    I have had whole classrooms full of students with Written Output Disorder AND Disordered Written Output Disorder and quite a few with Absolutely No Written Output At All Disorder

  5. Margaret Soltan Says:
    January 12th, 2012 at 4:47PM

    tp: LOL. Extended LOL.

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