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My first experience with laptops in the classroom
has not been positive.
This is the first year we are using a new classroom
building with "wired
rooms." Every seat has power and a network plug.
I am participating in a pilot project in which each
student has been loaned
a laptop, and they keep this laptop for their
exclusive use all year. My
particular section has 8 students. I have one
junior and seven seniors.
Once a week we meet with other sections, so this
involves about 32 students,
each with a laptop, in one room with everybody
connected to the Internet.
The problem? I can't keep the students from playing
games or surfing the
Internet during class. If I have a specific
computer activity for them to
do, most will do it, but some will keep playing
their games or pursuing
their surfing and occasionally look at their
neighbor's screen (who is
hopefully doing the assigned task.) However, if
there isn't an assigned
computer task for the moment, i.e. I am spending a
few minutes lecturing, or
I am trying to engage in a discussion, I almost
immediately lose the whole
class.
These students were not chosen at random. They are
"good" students. Yet
they cannot resist the many different types of
temptations that lure them
away from the class topic. A clear sign you have
lost someone is when they
are wearing headphones plugged into their laptop.
But I even have had
students forget their headphones so they play the
game through their laptop
speaker and disrupt the whole class. Sometimes
students will win their
game, or whatever, and shout out loud, "Yeh, take
that!" etc. They don't
even apologize when they do this. It's
unbelievable.
I finally had to tell them... "When we are actually
doing something with the
computers you may have your screen flipped up.
Otherwise your laptop screen
has to be closed. You don't abide by this and we
take the laptop back."
Michael D. Edmiston, Ph.D.
Phone/voice-mail: 419-358-3270
Professor of Chemistry & Physics FAX:
419-358-3323
Chairman, Science Department E-Mail
edmiston@bluffton.edu
Bluffton College
280 West College Avenue
Bluffton, OH 45817