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I came across this interesting article in the NYTimes about technology in the classroom: New Class(room) War: Teacher vs. Technology – New York Times
Apparently lots of teachers are annoyed with the fact that students use their laptops and smart/cell phones in class instead of listening to the Prof. According to one:
“The more you give, the more they take. These devices become an indisposable sort of thing for the students. And nothing should be indisposable. Multitasking is good, but I want them to do more tasking in my class.”
The author replies:
“To which one can only say: Amen. And add: Too bad the good guy is going to lose.”
Seriously? How is text messaging worse than doodling on the corner of the page, daydreaming or passing notes? They are all ways of ignoring the teacher and have been around for as long as boring teachers have.
If profs want to get more student engagement, they need to make their classes more engaging. Lots of education research shows that lecturing is just not very effective at fostering serious intellectual thinking. I wrote my PWR2 paper on cooperative learning which does a much better job.
All I have to say is that at least these students are coming to class. I think many more people would just skip lecture if they weren’t allowed to text, surf facebook or according to the article, watch porn, during lecture.
What do you guys think? Technology in classrooms yay or nay?

source : http://tusb.stanford.edu/2007/11/apparently_professors_hate_lap_1.html