More Professors Evicting Laptops From the Classroom (The Washington Post)

Laptop computers were, not so long ago, embraced by higher education as a mighty technological innovation, but these days, more and more professors are telling students to leave them at the door.

Dale Tomlinson
March 10, 2010 at 11:31 am
This move by professors — or any teacher — is long overdue. If the students want to do things other than concentrate on the class they are in, they can skip class altogether and be open and honest about what they believe is important. And the issue of not being able to enforce such a ban with “200 students” applies only to (1) schools with such overly large classes, and (2) a professor who refuses to demand the ban, and who will simply dismiss students who he finds are using banned media; that threat will help enforcement if it is acted upon consistently. The teacher need not find everyone all the time.
The new trend in education seems to be (certainly from many students’ point of view) that “I don’t need to learn facts that my parents — or grandparents — had to know; I just need to be able to find them (on the internet).” Great. Try to have an intelligent conversation without knowing the facts of the subject in hand — or mind. Some things you just have to learn. Period.