In the Race
Now, here, you see, it takes all the blogging I can do to keep in the same place.
If I want to get somewhere else, I must blog twice as fast as that!
You see, I'm in
the Red Queen's Race...
Pay Attention...This Is Costing You Big Bucks!
By Janet Evans
Tuesday, Jun 3 2008, 06:00 PM
Perhaps you have a child already attending a college or university, or maybe you are getting ready to send one off in the fall. Maybe you who are reading this are attending a university. Whatever the case may be, if you have a laptop that you carry to class in college to take notes, consider bringing along a notebook and pen with you in the near future.
University of Chicago Law School officials have made the move to ban all wireless connections from their classrooms. Beginning April 11th, they instituted a school-wide ban. Students may still use the laptops to take notes.
University of Chicago Law School is not the first school, and won’t be the last to institute some sort of ban. Some schools have banned laptops totally from class. Suffolk University Law School (Boston) made national headlines in November 2007 when a professor banned laptops outright in her classroom.
According to e School News, Many law schools have given professors the choice of banning wireless access or laptops altogether. A professor at Harvard Law School who did not want her name published said disallowing laptops has cultivated class discussion and student participation. “Students have never complained about it, and if anything, they say the classroom environment is vastly improved,” the professor said. “And I find the students listen to each other more.”
While I’m just referring to law schools here, I imagine this option will spread to all schools eventually. It’s too easy for a student to be distanced from the lecture and the discussion when typing notes. Can you picture a lecture hall filled with laptops and everyone pounding away on them? How distracting is that? Then throw in a few cell phones with some texting going on, too. But not everyone agrees. We have technology for a purpose, after all. Perhaps the answer is having your lecture via the laptop from your dorm room or apartment.
Read an article from The Chronicle of Higher Education: Information Technology
The Fight for Classroom Attention: Professor vs. Laptop í here
