Julie, Some unreliable thoughts on the question of laptops and classroom. My own practice is "distance learning": the computer as the space of learning. Distance learning allows--as this list demonstrates--communities of collaboration and conversation to be formed by people scattered in time and space. Women , for example, who have home responsibilities can be freed from the need to be at a particular space at a particular time, and so can become students: unless, of course, the teacher or the institution believes in the importance of the face-to-face encounter, and requires one such meeting a month, or a semester, or a year. So: should distance learning programs require face-to-face meetings, or do such meeting negate some of the important benefits of distance learning? The laptop is at least two kinds of instruments. It is, for one, a recording device, allowing for notetaking in the face-to-face classroom, and other valuable extensions and enhancements of the activities of the conventional classroom. and lecture-recitation-discussion modes of instruction. Using the laptop in this way does not remove the student from the classroom: he or she continues to be "present." The computer, however, is also a communicative space, a space which allows the student to leave the classroom, to absent herself and think and talk with others about matters not connected with those of the classroom. So: the student is bodily present in the classroom but psychically absent. The proponents of the "digital native" thesis argue that the new computer-skilled student can "multi-task," can be in your classroom and on this list at the same time, or in short alternating bursts of attention. My hunch is that if I was to return to the face-to-face classroom I would limit the use of computers, or ban them, or rethink and revise my instruction so as to build in their use to my teaching. Which means, of course, that I don't yet know how I come out on the matter. Steve Eskow ----- Original Message ----- From: "Julie Cohen" <jec@law.georgetown.edu> To: <air-l@listserv.aoir.org> Sent: Friday, May 18, 2007 6:36 AM Subject: [Air-l] laptops and Internet access in class
A colleague of mine recently published this op-ed in the Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/06/AR200704 0601544.html
He describes his reasons for banning his first-year students from bringing laptops to class (they go into "stenographic mode", or they surf and check e-mail, which distracts other students and detracts from the learning experience). He reports that his students reacted positively to the experiment (some of my own reacted quite negatively when I mentioned they idea, but they were upper-years who had self-selected to study IP/technology law). He has also begun campaigning to have us modify our wireless network so that it is turned "off" in classrooms during class time and/or to modify our entire network to disable students' university e-mail and web accounts during the hours that they're listed as being signed up for class. I was surprised to learn this, but apparently the U. of Michigan law school has done both of these things and some other law schools are considering it.
In the ensuing debate, many colleagues cited what I think are some very good reasons not to do the last two things, including: missed pedagogical opportunities (both re use of the Internet for on-the-fly research as subjects come up in class and re ethics of networked technology use), cost, inequality as between students who use only our network and students who can access other available wireless networks via commercial accounts, and excessive paternalism.
Now that the semester has ended, I expect the subject to come up again, and I thought I would see what members of this list think. Most specifically, I'm wondering (1) what you all say to colleagues who react to laptops and wired classrooms in this way; and (2) techniques that you use to encourage students to think about their own responsibilities re networked technology usage.
Thanks, Julie
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