Pajamas Media » Blog Archive » Laptop U: Where No One Looks at the Professor
Forget about students passing notes. Today, lecturing to a classroom of college students means competing with Facebook, YouTube, and Instant Messenger.
This sort of faux controversy will eventually resolve itself as technology continues to advance. What we have are two paradigms: Teacher on one end of log, student on other, and 24/7 connectivity to The Cloud (which is where we, as individuals, and especially as students, are headed) in headon competition. Laptops make an appearance as a battleground simply because they are clunkily obvious evidence of connectivity. In the future, nearly seamlessly, students will be able to offer attention to a professor and at the same time use dozens of methods to analyze, interpret, verify, and fact-check what that professor is teaching. This, to my way of thinking, is a good thing, not a bad one.
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Luckily, I do not educate the future, but if I held class, I could give a damn less if the students were listening or not. As long as they aren’t interrupting others from paying attention, no harm no foul.
Come test time, they may be a bit surprised though. And just like the real life, just because the information is readily at hand doesn’t mean you know what to do with it.