Comment by Throwaway204044 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Throwaway204044 | Hacker News Reader

Throwaway204044

I have a physical disability (motor dysgraphia). I keep this extremely private - only a handful of people in my life know. Throughout university I used either a laptop or my phone for notes.

> 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.

But should the classes be made worse for everyone for the benefit of a fairly small group of people (i.e. people with an invisible disability and the desire to keep this private)?

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).

Silent phone usage doesn't impact the class, it impacts the individual using the phone.

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.

But if half the class is fiddling with their phone instead of paying attention or engaging with the class it does begin to impact it overall.

I would say it depends how the class is done. In my opinion all class material should be available as pdf before the class, and during the class students should just ask what they didnt understood from the material. Any good question can be included in faq's material for the next year

> Why should my education and social life be negatively impacted because individuals decide to indulge in self-destructive behaviors?

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 happens when your disability collides with the disability of another student?

What if a student with ADHD says that they find the clickity-clackity of your keyboard distracting?

I'm guessing you've never had to give lectures to students who are staring at screens instead of your presentation and are clearly not paying attention? It's distracting for the lecturer as much as it is for the students in the room and it makes the job much more challenging to focus. No one wants to give a lecture to a room of people who are uninterested in the material.

> Silent phone usage doesn't impact the class, it impacts the individual using the phone.

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”

I don't have a disability, and I took notes through university on a laptop. I could capture notes (which includes more than what were on the slides, like interesting questions and points) 10x faster than writing, and they were 10x more useful afterwards between legibility, searchability, and organization. The classes I wasn't allowed a laptop were notably harder because of it.

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.

Whether it's a good policy in the first place is a bit of a different question than how to accommodate this policy to people with a disability; I just wanted to reply to that part. I don't really have an opinion about the policy as such; my education is from before laptops and phones and I have no classroom experience beyond that (i.e. I'm not a teacher).

I think from my college days, the people sitting towards the front using their laptops for things other than class (especially watching videos).

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.

The article also says:

> 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.

It sounds a bit like you would like to reserve the privilege of parking in disabled parking but don’t want to be identified by the blue badge as someone disabled.

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.

Disabled parking spots (i.e. spots in close proximity to the entrance) are an inherently finite resource. If we could design parking in such a way that everyone gets a short walk, we would.

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