[Air-l] laptops and Internet access in class

[Dr. Steve Eskow]

Julie,

Some unreliable thoughts on the question of laptops and classroom.

My own practice is "distance learning": the computer as the space of 
learning.

Distance learning allows--as this list demonstrates--communities of 
collaboration and conversation to be formed  by people scattered in time and 
space. Women , for example, who have home responsibilities can be freed from 
the need to be at a particular space at a particular time, and so can become 
students: unless, of course, the teacher or the institution believes in the 
importance of the face-to-face encounter, and requires one such meeting a 
month, or a semester, or a year.

So: should distance learning programs require face-to-face meetings, or do 
such meeting negate some of the important benefits of distance learning?

The laptop is at least two kinds of instruments.

It is, for one, a recording device, allowing for notetaking in the 
face-to-face classroom, and other valuable extensions and enhancements of 
the activities of the conventional classroom. and 
lecture-recitation-discussion modes of instruction.

Using the laptop in this way does not remove the student from the classroom: 
he or she continues to be "present."

The computer, however, is also a communicative space, a space which allows 
the student to leave the classroom, to absent herself and think and talk 
with others about matters not connected with those of the classroom.

So: the student is bodily present in the classroom but psychically absent.

The proponents of the "digital native" thesis argue that the new 
computer-skilled student can "multi-task," can be in your classroom and on 
this list at the same time, or in short alternating bursts of attention.

My hunch is that if I was to return to the face-to-face classroom I would 
limit the use of computers, or ban them, or rethink and revise my 
instruction so as to build in their use to my teaching.

Which means, of course, that I don't yet know how I come out on the matter.

Steve Eskow
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Julie Cohen" <jec at law.georgetown.edu>
To: <air-l at listserv.aoir.org>
Sent: Friday, May 18, 2007 6:36 AM
Subject: [Air-l] laptops and Internet access in class


>A colleague of mine recently published this op-ed in the Washington
> Post:
>
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/06/AR200704
> 0601544.html
>
>
>
> He describes his reasons for banning his first-year students from
> bringing laptops to class (they go into "stenographic mode", or they
> surf and check e-mail, which distracts other students and detracts from
> the learning experience).  He reports that his students reacted
> positively to the experiment (some of my own reacted quite negatively
> when I mentioned they idea, but they were upper-years who had
> self-selected to study IP/technology law).  He has also begun
> campaigning to have us modify our wireless network so that it is turned
> "off" in classrooms during class time and/or to modify our entire
> network to disable students' university e-mail and web accounts during
> the hours that they're listed as being signed up for class.  I was
> surprised to learn this, but apparently the U. of Michigan law school
> has done both of these things and some other law schools are considering
> it.
>
>
>
> In the ensuing debate, many colleagues cited what I think are some very
> good reasons not to do the last two things, including: missed
> pedagogical opportunities (both re use of the Internet for on-the-fly
> research as subjects come up in class and re ethics of networked
> technology use), cost, inequality as between students who use only our
> network and students who can access other available wireless networks
> via commercial accounts, and excessive paternalism.
>
>
>
> Now that the semester has ended, I expect the subject to come up again,
> and I thought I would see what members of this list think.  Most
> specifically, I'm wondering (1) what you all say to colleagues who react
> to laptops and wired classrooms in this way; and (2) techniques that you
> use to encourage students to think about their own responsibilities re
> networked technology usage.
>
>
>
> Thanks, Julie
>
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