A Professor's Toughest Competitor

A Professor’s Toughest Competitor

More and more professors are banning laptops from the classroom in the United States. Aware of the various diversions it can bring, professors are compelling students to take notes the traditional way: through pen and paper.

The Washington Post, in their report on the matter, made the following observation:

“A generation ago, academia embraced the laptop as the most welcome classroom innovation since the ballpoint pen. But during the past decade, it has evolved into a powerful distraction. Wireless Internet connections tempt students away from note-typing to e-mail, blogs, YouTube videos, sports scores, even online gaming -- all the diversions of a home computer beamed into the classroom to compete with the professor for the student's attention.”

In the Philippines, technology has finally penetrated our corner of the world enough to drive down the market prices of laptops and notebook computers. However, taking notes using a laptop does not seem to be a common practice among students. At least not yet. What is easily observable, though, is the fact that those few who use their laptops during class are more often than not doing other non-academic things also (if not exclusively), especially if wireless internet is provided.

Nowadays, the pursuit of wide access to information has created the problem of diversion, pervasive enough that it already affects the independent thinking of the students. It is like giving the students an enormous amount of arsenal, without training them on how to use it. It seems that students, and most of the world population, are not disciplined enough to handle the amount of information they have access to. It always goes back to that problem: how to handle all the information available at your fingertips.

Read the Washington Post article here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/08/AR2010030804915_pf.html

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