I have been opposed to laptops in classrooms for years, even before working in academia. Years ago, while working in consulting, I was leading my office’s local training for new hire analysts and was doing a module on Excel. The fresh out of college kids with their new laptops were typing away fast and furious. I stopped and said to them, “there is no reason for you to be typing that much in Excel, close your IM.” We all had a good laugh, but to this day, having left for graduate school years ago, I will IM with them while they are on the client site billing their hours away. It’s not quite as funny when it is someone else’s money.
Now I TA for a political science class and have the opportunity to sit in the back of the classroom and see what the laptops are displaying–75% of them have Facebook, some internet flash game, wikipedia, IM, or some combination thereof open at all times. The other 25% only part of the time. Sure there is a Word file open in the background with a few lines on it, but really what is the point? Staring off into space or thinking about the last party is less distracting than all the things they have going on that actually require attention. I agree with the poster above that the internet availability makes things worse. But that only goes so far, last semester there was even a student who would watch DVDs of CSI with the closed captioning turned on.
I will never allow laptops in my class room and the professor I TA for has decided that after this semester he will do the same.
