When Technology Hurts In The Classroom

Here is my column from Tuesday, October 7, 2008.

You know those parents who use television as a babysitter? They have been considered responsible for the rise of child obesity and the early development of attention deficit disorder.

I hold the ____ Wireless Laptop Pilot Project that was introduced in 2003 in the same regard.

According to the Web site, "_____ Wireless Laptop Pilot Project is committed to creating a dynamic and collaborative educational environment that enhances teaching and learning, creativity, scholarship and global connectivity through a wireless laptop initiative."

To me, this is a giant leap for mankind … in the wrong direction. The campus has a wireless Internet service that allows students and faculty to surf the World Wide Web almost anywhere on campus.

While this is a marvelous luxury, students and professors are grasping the laptop initiative with the wrong frame of mind. The project is supposed to "enhance" teaching and learning. All I seem to notice is blatant misuses by both parties.

All too often I witness students in my classes, who claim to be taking notes, blasting off into the crap-filled cyberspace. Gmail chats, Perez Hilton and any other time-wasters appear on the lithium-ion powered windows to the Web.

Some could claim to have A.D.D., which was a feasible excuse in high school to doze off during a lecture, but not all the students I see wandering off into the Web can be suffering from a deficit of attention.

The Pilot Program's Web site also talks about creating "global connectivity through a wireless laptop initiative." If anything, it is making people less interested in learning about the world around them, instead making their social circles more close-knit through instant messenger.

The misuse of laptops in class ends with the students, but begins with regulation by the course instructors.

I have been in classes that allowed them, banned them or didn't care either way.

I think classes that don't allow the use of laptops are correct in having them banned from students' composite-wood workstations. Pen and paper work just fine for taking notes and, in my opinion, help the material become internalized.

Professors are setting up classes to be more laptop-friendly when they should be making less of their lectures require technology. Sure, papers need to be written and PowerPoints need to be produced on computers, but these things can be created outside of class.

Students should not use laptops to take notes and teachers should not use their computers to give lectures. Teachers who use PowerPoints to teach classes should use them as supplements to lectures instead of substitutes. I have seen lectures given word-for-word off of the projections instead of the PowerPoints being used as visual aides.

So the (university's) laptop initiative becomes a circular argument. On one side, there is a desire to make our campus "green," paperless and more computer-friendly. It seems like an ideal goal if there was a way to remove the students' desires to wander beyond the realms of Microsoft Word.

I understand that in some medical and special needs cases that students need laptops for classes. And I am fine with that; I am just against the improper use of laptops in classes.

Also, some classes require laptops and include them in a list of course materials, for instance, some journalism courses. But other departments such as math and science don't need to make digital lectures.

Think what you want about the use of laptops in class, but I think the (the university's) Wireless Laptop Pilot Project is an excuse for students not to pay attention in class and for teachers to not have to teach the curriculum.

Underscores and parenthetical replacements used to remove personal references.