[Air-l] laptops and Internet access in class

Matthew Bernius mbernius at gmail.com
Tue May 22 07:00:42 PDT 2007


On 5/21/07, Matthew Bernius <mbernius at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Next year I will be banning cell phone, ipods, etc. in my undergraduate
> classes. [snipped]
> > And, at least for a school like RIT, that prides itself on preparing
> it's students for the workplace,
>
> basic technology etiquette needs to be stressed. The sad fact is that a
> lot of the technology

> behavior I've seen isn't appropriate for the workplace.
>
> I'm wondering whether Matt might expand on ideas introduced in this
> posting. In particular, suggestions that techology usage in classrooms
> doesn't translate into workplace settings. Choosing not to use the
> technology, as the instructor, is a contradictory practice as workplace
> educators are highly dependent on a variety of information and communication
> technologies in promotion of learning among employees in a variety of work
> settings.
>
> All of the class I teach have a lecture and a lab component. As for
myself, while I didn't grow up with the internet, I have been a computer
user since age 5. After school I spent eight years working in the new media
industry.

My experience is that entering freshmen don't have the maturity or the
skills to effectively use the technology to support learning. And I don't
believe that those skills can initially be developed on new technology.

As already discussed, too many students use these weapons of mass
distraction to punch out of an interaction at the smallest hint of boredom
(or difficulty). Attention is a skill/discipline that needs to be developed,
including learning to pay attention to things that you don't want to pay
attention to. I can speak from personal experience, that people who punch
out/don't pay attention in professional meetings are VERY much noticed (and
it's held against them... I've learned that the hard way).

In terms of multitaskers, yes, my students can handle multiple tasks at
once. And quite frankly, they don't handle any of them particularly well. So
another goal is to help them develop a "here and now" focus.

Blind faith in technology has become a crutch for student to avoid learning
fundamentals. While they assume that an answer is "out there," they more
often than not, lack both the desire to seek it out or the skills (or even
suspicion) to interrogate the information once they find it.

I've found that these so called "digital natives" haven't even begun to
interrogate the systems (language, practices, heuristics) that they operate
in. If anything, they are far worse at switching digital authoring tools
than we "immigrants" who were forced to internalize the language and
metaphor of the tools we used. This is a common thread that I've heard from
numerous employers -- that recent grad have a real hard time switching
between tools (sometimes even between different versions of the same
software).

I admit that any and all of these issues could be addressed through
"creative technology teaching." I've worked on trying a number of them. All
have been unsatisfactory. Frankly, I don't have time for that anymore. I'm
pulling the crutches out from under them and taking them out of the comfort
zone that technology has built for them. I'm stripping things down and
forcing communication (and reading). Computers will be used in the lab
without a doubt. But lecture/discussion exercises will take place in
"thought space" rather than letting students retreat into digital space.

As students progress, I have no problems with allowing laptops back into the
class room and using them as tools (like I said, I plan to use my laptop to
take notes in my graduate classes). But there is a maturity issue here. And
there is also a personal responsibility issue.

To pull it all back to the initial question, there is far more to a
technology job than using technology. I have no doubt these students can
"use" technology (though not as well as they think they can).  The majority
of my students don't have the fundamental skill basis to use technology
well. While it may be true that there are different learning modalities, the
fact is part of my responsibility is to prepare these kids to work for
people who are often even less comfortable or understanding of this behavior
than I am.

- Matt



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