I was shocked when I found out they had removed wireless access in some of the largest lecture halls at my previous university, at the request of some professors. I have a few responses. First, I recognize that email and the internet can be distracting. That said, bored students will always find a way to distract themselves. I sat behind two students at RIT during a talk. One was doodling, the other was simultaneously taking notes in a word processor, IMing, playing World of Warcraft, and editing the design of a website. I was surprised not only that she had a laptop that could handle all of this at once, but that she seemed more engaged in the talk than her doodling companion. The experience also highlighted how difficult it was to sit BEHIND someone who has graphical content on their laptop. I consider myself a fairly animated speaker, but I apparently resemble an animated character popular with undergrads these days, and it was distracting for students to see that animation on screens several rows ahead. That is, I have a feeling laptops are far more distracting to others in the room then they are to the users. But turning off access really seems like throwing out the baby with the bathwater. I had a similar experience to Steve's, with a hearing impaired student assisted by her peers when the ASL translator was unable to come. (In fact, this was for a course on cyberporn, and I have to say that the ASL translator was far more distracting than Wifi could ever be. Each time I would use a term that was even slightly risque, she would blush uncontrollably and attempt to figure out how to translate it. I could watch the eyes of every student in the class shift from me to her as soon as I uttered such a term.) In some classes, I announce a place (IRC, AIM, or the dreaded Blackboard) where students can chat freely in a backchannel. I've also experimented, with mixed results, with projecting that chat so that I and the other non-connected students can follow the backchannel discussion (i.e., a "frontchannel"). Especially in smaller courses, Wikipedia has become a kind of off-board textbook. I feel confident in having students get into small groups and explain how a certain idea applied in, say, the Haymarket Riot, knowing that if students have no idea of what it is--a common occurrence--they can look it up quickly. That kind of on-the-fly, interest-driven information seeking, I think, can be a very effective way of learning in a classroom. Many of my students have a browser up to check ideas as I am lecturing, and frequently they will stop me if I get a date or fact wrong. I can see how that would be unnerving for some, but I love it. Others have edited blog posts or wiki entries based on the content of the course while we are in class. I have yet to try collaborative editing of shared notes, but I look forward to trying it. If you don't plan on changing your style of lecture (assuming you are lecturing), I can see why the laptops would appear to be a problem, particularly in large classrooms. To be honest, the larger problem for me are classes where not everyone has a laptop, and you have to deal with uneven distribution of the technology. That limits how much experimenting with hybrid teaching is possible. Finally, especially in a law school, you would think that a narrowly tailored policy would be the norm. In large classes, I generally request that the laptop users sit in the back so as not to distract their classmates, and to make sure that all audio is off. When I have guest lecturers, I ask that they do not use their laptops, since I recognize that many such guests--depending on their industry and background--may register the tapping of keyboards as disrespect. I am shocked that an admonition alone from the faculty member to not use a laptop is not seen as enough, but I suppose a "wifi kill switch" that knocked out power to local wifi routers would at least be preferable to forcing all of the faculty, on the basis of largely anecdotal evidence, to precipitously eschew today's most common tool of communication and exchange of knowledge. - Alex -- // // This email is // [X] assumed public and may be blogged / forwarded. // [ ] assumed to be private, please ask before redistributing. // // Alexander C. Halavais // Social Architect // http://alex.halavais.net //