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Comment by Alex3917 | Hacker News Reader

If people are banned from taking notes on laptops, then they should be banned from taking notes on pen and paper also.

That makes no sense. It's almost as if you did not read the article. [i did not either =p, but it still makes no sense.]

The laptop has much more of a chance of being distracting. Pen and paper can and does, such as old school IM (passing notes), but its about killing the slippery slope.

I personally support all bans on all (personal)technology in a classroom setting. This includes phones, laptops etc.

What happend to the Socratic method of teaching/learning? =(

Reminds me of an article in Byte magazine back in the 80s or early 90s. A student at Georgia Tech wrote his dissertation on a program he developed for a personal digital assistant program, hosted on a wearable computer. Partway through his dissertation defence, the examiners realized that he was using his dissertation to defend itself. Would you have voted his thesis up or down?

I would have voted him up if he was doing AI - the most impressive way to get a phd in AI would be to have your creation defend your thesis for you.

agreed, obviously if you are studying technology and specifically technological assistence interfaces/tools then those specific instances have a place in the classroom. I would think firearms are banned in classrooms right? What about at police academies or your local "weapons manufacturing trade school". See what I'm getting at?

I just see overwhelmingly more times than not students using aim/facebook/meebo/yahoo games/ during class. I'm sure there IS an argument to be made for people that actually use their laptops to "optimize" learning, but they are few and far between imo.

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