From the Chronicle of Higher Education Wired Campus Blog:
Web Surfing in the Classroom: Sound Familiar?Over at the New York Times’s
Freakonomics blog, Yale Law School professor Ian Ayres praises the University of Chicago Law School’s decision to
eliminate Internet access in some classrooms. But more importantly, he recounts an amusing sketch from the Yale’s “Law Revue” skit night, which is worth sharing in full:
One of the skits had a group of students sitting at desks, facing the audience, listening to a rofessor drone on. All of the students were looking at laptops except for one, who had a deck of cards and was playing solitaire. The professor was outraged and demanded that the student explain why she was playing cards. When she answered “My laptop is broken,” I remember there was simultaneously a roar of laughter from the student body and a gasp from the professors around me. In this one moment, we learned that something new was happening in class.More than the posting itself, the comments on the Chronicle blog site are interesting to read as they fall steadily on the side of expanding internet access in the classroom with the caveat of the needs of both the professor to move away from the podium and better interact with students and of the students to make "proper use" of the technology. This, of course, is not the first time an institution or professor who simply does not understand how technology can effectively enhance learning in the classroom. Note this post titled starkly
No Laptops Allowed from March, 2006. Seems like Spring is the time for flowers to bloom, showers to fall, and Law professors to complain about students and their computers.
A recent thread on the DSSHE listserv discussed access technology and its uses for students with attention deficit issues. I have known plenty of attention deficient students over the years for whom having a computer in the classroom is a greater benefit to their learning style than a hindrance to the professors teaching style. For example, I once worked with a student who understood that his brain operated on two separate hemispheres. While one side was trying to attend to the lecture, the other was wondering about looking for something more interesting to focus upon - the latter half was more dominate. For this student, the ability to have a game of solitaire running on their laptop allowed the "play" side of their brain to focus on one thing while the "learn" side of their brain focused on the lecture and classroom interaction. Now this is obviously an extreme case, but the point is clear that even if a student is playing solitaire on their computer, there may be a very good and reasonable reason for doing so.
What of the professor who wants students to bring their textbooks and other readings to class and be prepared to discuss - but frowns upon the student who arrives with a laptop instead of a hard-copy book? The simple answer is that the students is allowed special consideration due to a disability. But this is assuming the student has registered with the campus disability services office. How about the student who takes it upon himself to somehow convert or obtain their own materials without going through the DSS process? Should students be barred from accessing their materials in a non-traditional format because the professor is uncomfortable with computers in the classroom?
How about the whole concept of digital textbooks as DAISY, accessible PDF, easy to use text-to-speech tools and screen readers can all be used to allow students ready access to their "print" materials in real-time and within the classroom. How many of us have directly compared the digital versions to hard-copy versions of textbooks in real-time simulations and shown their equality? Since when is a laptop or other portable digital device unequal to the hard-copy text? Arguments can be made in both directions but the bottom line is -- who cares -- as long as the student has access to the course materials in a format that allows equitability in education.
For that matter - what of the student who prefers typing to handwriting and truly uses their laptop for taking notes? In my experience, this is becoming commonplace as handwriting skills are degenerating while typing speeds are increasing. More and more often I am meeting incoming freshmen with atrocious handwriting who can crank out 50+ words per minute on a keyboard while carrying on a separate conversation (or interacting within a lecture). For these students, the laptop is not a toy but rather a tool (and a darn important one at that!).
Laptops in the lecture hall can also assist students with disabilities needing the accommodation of a classroom Notetaker. When students ask me how they should go about finding someone whom they can approach for notes -- a daunting task in itself -- I tell them to look for the classmate using a laptop in the lecture. Rather than dealing with photocopying scribbles or using that awful carbon stuff, laptop taken notes can be directly emailed to the recipient. After all, shouldn't the implementation of an accommodation such as the sharing of notes be as effortless on the notetaker as it is on the notetakee?
I could jibber-jabber about this all day but will end on this note – professors who cannot now accept the use of student personal computers in the classroom had better stay away from this blog post and the accompanying photograph in the Tech Talk section of the Joplin (Missouri) Globe -
Computers, Projectors, and Webcasts, Oh My! For those who cannot see the photograph, it is a seated line of school children (they look to be first graders) using styali on notebook computers to practicetheir handwriting. The caption reads,
"Lower School (grades K-5) students practice their handwriting on computer screens, and will be working on worksheets that previously would have consumed a lot of paper. Their best efforts will be sent home electronically so Mom can still have a copy for the refrigerator."This - my friends - is the modern education!!
Check out Ira Socol's comment (below) and definitely read his posting
Humiliation and the Modern Professor on the SpEdChange blog.
Labels: faculty, in-the-classroom
