No laptops, no phones in class
crookedtimber.org
crookedtimber.org
> 1. Students with learning-related difficulties need to use laptops for note taking, and my policy either prevents that, or outs them as having a learning disability.
> ... If a student needs a laptop I explain to the class that our Accommodations Center has a policy of hiring students to take notes on a laptop for students with relevant disabilities (which it does) and that anybody using a laptop is doing so for a student who needs typed notes.
This explanation does nothing to alleviate the inevitable question of being 'outed' by anyone asking the question 'why are you using a laptop?'. I wouldn't have wanted to draw any more attention to myself by using my phone.
I only encountered this policy with one lecturer at university. I worked around this by ignoring the policy when I was there (claiming arrogance when classmates asked) and skipping lectures. In this instance the policy didn't cause me major issues, but encouraging it further makes me uneasy.
In the end, it may be impossible to satisfy everyone, so some trade-offs will have to be made. "We can make accommodations if you ask" seems reasonable. Anyone can keep anything private for any reason as far as I'm concerned, but at the same time you also can't expect policies to be designed in such a way to accommodate every possible need automatically (i.e. without people asking for it).
Why should my education and social life be negatively impacted because individuals decide to indulge in self-destructive behaviours? I use my laptop because it's significantly more effective for my education than pen and paper.
To answer your point, the group of people who are affected by this are people who use their laptops for notes. This isn't "a fairly small group of people". I'm just affected more than most: it eliminates my ability to take notes, rather than reducing the efficacy.
Because although a teacher cannot make someone learn, it is the teacher's responsibility to create an environment which is as conducive to learning as possible. And:
>> Apple, Google et. al. have spent massive fortunes developing a technology that is excellent at commanding the attention of even quite committed students.
What if a student with ADHD says that they find the clickity-clackity of your keyboard distracting?
That’s just not true. You decided to attend class, you are taking up a seat. You count toward the outcome for the class and what you do and don’t do affects the class as a total. If you decide to half ass it, that affects the class. At the end of the year if every student fails. A teacher can’t just go: “but that’s not a problem with the class, that’s an individual problem for each student, the class was perfect they all individually just weren’t good enough”
And no, I shouldn't need to go request specific accommodations for this, folks can move to the other side of the room (or ask me to move tbh, I wasn't attached to the seat) if the existence of a screen is that bad for them.
Someone who ONLY takes notes shouldn't be a problem at all. Someone courteous dims their screen and again only uses it for note taking. Definitely not a problem.
> I teach philosophy, which is hard. And I trust that my students can read, so if I have a lot to tell them I write it down and get them to read it. That’s not to say that I don’t go over it sometimes in class. But the point of having class is to do learning that won’t (or possibly can’t) be done outside of class. That is, mainly, problem solving: thinking and talking together about the arguments and ideas that I want them to understand, and practicing the skills of analysis and reflection that philosophy is particularly good at developing, and which are essential to doing philosophy. So they don’t really need the laptops for note-taking.
As someone who prefers typing to handwriting, went into this article with lots of skepticism. However, if the author doesn't want his students to take any notes during class—digitally or on paper—then clearly no one will need a laptop. The rest of the discussion is moot.
It also means the author's experience won't be generalizable to other classes. Unless the author believes that students should never be expected to take notes during class, which IMO would have been a more interesting argument. He makes some nods in that direction:
> But the point of having class is to do learning that won’t (or possibly can’t) be done outside of class. That is, mainly, problem solving: thinking and talking together about the arguments and ideas that I want them to understand, and practicing the skills of analysis and reflection.
Sorry, but that’s just not something that the system should be designed to cater for. You either accept the badge and the privilege or you don’t, demanding that anyone must be able to park in disabled parking without a badge because they might secretly be disabled but not want to signal it seems beyond absurd.
[0] When I was a young lawyer decades ago, I overheard a senior partner in our firm — one hell of a lawyer and a great guy but sometimes a bit moody — scold another associate for having guessed about a point of law that could and should have been checked. The partner's voice rising: "Why do you think we buy you the [expletive] books? It's so you can look these things up!"
In a class of 30, we only need 2 or 3 note takers, and they can do it after the class, from the recording.
Remove the note taking, and no one needs a laptop.
LOL - if only students could be depended on to, you know, actually ask questions during class!
The better approach: The professor poses (pre-written) questions to the class and tells the students, "turn to your neighbor and see what you think"; then, the professor calls on a group to answer. (See the example at § 2.2.3, "Homework review - signature block at https://toedtclassnotes.site44.com/#Day02.)
To be sure, this approach is initially more work for the instructor. But it seems to significantly increase audience engagement. Over time, the instructor builds up a question bank that can be selectively re-used.
When I taught CS, I always allowed this with a request to only share it between members of the class. My comment was that I spent the time to tailor things for the class and was generally poorly compensated for such, so please don't impinge on my ability to teach this to people whom I could charge much more for it. Nobody ever shared it beyond the class as far as I could tell.
I generally made laptop users sit in the back--the orienting reflex is strong and screen motion is VERY distracting. I also didn't require class attendance; if you were going to watch porn--please just stay home.
I did however warn people that the probability was that they were not going to pass the class without attendance. We didn't tend to write programs during class, but we generally went over methods for analyzing problems in order to reduce them to a case you could then write a program for.
Of course, I didn't just "read my slides". I tended to draw on the chalkboard while walking through solving various problems and putting things to application.
> I teach philosophy, which is hard. And I trust that my students can read, so if I have a lot to tell them I write it down and get them to read it. That’s not to say that I don’t go over it sometimes in class. But the point of having class is to do learning that won’t (or possibly can’t) be done outside of class. That is, mainly, problem solving: thinking and talking together about the arguments and ideas that I want them to understand, and practicing the skills of analysis and reflection that philosophy is particularly good at developing, and which are essential to doing philosophy. So they don’t really need the laptops for note-taking.