sit in the front and you won't have to worry about seeing people with laptops in front of you...

2/24/2006 7:49:16 PM

the learning T, baby.

2/25/2006 12:45:05 AM

honestly i wouldnt want any regulation on it...
i wish people would be more considerate though

2/25/2006 2:59:23 AM

I think that it is great to have laptops in class. Not all use it for class-related work, but also not all use it for just entertainment. I guess at this point, it's their responsibility on how to use it. The non-users should just focus on the lecture and not worry about the laptop users. As long as they got the "mute" going, that's fine. I often see students using it for entertainment but at the same time they are answering most of the questions in class. For the ones who are just worthless, thanks for our curves.

2/25/2006 11:46:47 AM

I use my laptop to take notes in one of my classes, where the professor talks impossibly fast and print-outs of the PDFs just can't be big enough (or else I would have killed five trees by now). My method is to type all the relevant text from the slides into Word before the lecture then to take notes around that outline structure (to minimize the amount of typing I do so it's not as noisy for the people around me). I usually have Word and the PDF open side by side, and cut-paste pictures from the PDF into the .doc as the lecture goes, in between taking notes. I find it really useful.

I will note, though, that I never use AIM or my email program during class, and the only time I ever open up the internet is when the professor starts going into Vista to pull something up, I'll follow along. People who play games and chat on AIM are extremely distracting - I try to minimize how much I distract my classmates. There's a guy in my poly sci class right now who plays Solitare and Minesweeper during every class and it's extremely distracting.

2/26/2006 11:45:48 PM

haha I'm using mine in class right now

2/27/2006 10:04:49 AM

ban notebooks in class... people are all the time flipping pages, writing & erasing, making tons of noise. and half the time they are just doodling the opposite genders genitalia or what the professor would look like with a balloon for a head. its so distracting... god those mechanical pencils clicking over and over. and the games, tic tac toe, connect the dots, using the notebook paper to pass notes... they are just wasting their money on the class, and my money by distracting me. you know I can't look away from doodled genitalia

It would be best if everyone could just place tape recorders to hear the professor’s speech, and not take notes or interact with their environment at all to avoid disturbance.

[Edited on February 27, 2006 at 10:46 AM. Reason : .]

2/27/2006 10:45:34 AM

laptops in class, if anything, are going to increase

2/27/2006 8:43:54 PM

^^ nice sleight of hand. so people flip pages, click their pencils 50+ times a minute? Why don't you try to compare like things? That's right, it would completely invalidate your point.

For the record, if someone is clicking their pen non stop, you can be sure that i'd ask them to stop. It's the same with tapping pencils, shaking the chairs, etc. Writing is fairly inaudible.

People typing on that shit and the changing image on the screen are very distracting. On a continuum of distracting things, it's on the more distracting end (Don't try to fucking act like all distractions are the same). It's just like having a conversation while the lecture is going on. If you are going to do that shit, just leave.

[Edited on February 27, 2006 at 10:07 PM. Reason : dsafsd]

2/27/2006 10:01:32 PM

dont sit by them. laptops > than everyone. i feel bad for those of you who dont have them available in class...

2/27/2006 10:50:19 PM

Quote :

"For the record, if someone is clicking their pen non stop, you can be sure that i'd ask them to stop. It's the same with tapping pencils, shaking the chairs, etc. Writing is fairly inaudible."

so if someone with a laptop is annoying you tell them to stop

clicking pencils and shaking chairs aren't banned from the classroom

2/27/2006 11:13:43 PM

Quote :

" Law professor bans laptops in class, over student protest Source MEMPHIS (AP) — A group of University of Memphis law students are passing a petition against a professor who banned laptop computers from her classroom because she considers them a distraction in lectures. On March 6, Professor June Entman warned her first-year law students by e-mail to bring pens and paper to take notes in class. "My main concern was they were focusing on trying to transcribe every word that was I saying, rather than thinking and analyzing," Entman said Monday. "The computers interfere with making eye contact. You've got this picket fence between you and the students." The move didn't sit well with the students, who have begun collecting signatures against the move and tried to file a complaint with the American Bar Association. The complaint, based on an ABA rule for technology at law schools, was dismissed. "Our major concern is the snowball effect," said law school student Jennifer Bellott. "If you open the door for one professor, you open the door for every other professor to do the same thing." "If we continue without laptops, I'm out of here. I'm gone; I won't be able to keep up," said student Cory Winsett, who said his hand-written notes are incomplete and less organized. Law School Dean James Smoot said the decision was up to the professor, but the conflict has caused faculty to consider technology issues as the school prepares to move to a more advanced downtown facility in coming years. "

3/22/2006 2:06:33 PM

HUM

3/22/2006 3:58:01 PM

^he has some notes in the background. can't complain about that.

3/22/2006 4:33:08 PM

seriously...

and it's ONLY solitaire

i've seen much worse

3/22/2006 4:33:36 PM

Anyone who advocates banning laptops in class is a dumbfuck.

Our ECE 211 professor requires us to print out the power point lectures and bring them to class. They are usually around 15 pages each, and printing each lecture out brings my print quota down by dollar. I started bringing my laptop to class.. boom.. problem solved. No more pages and pages of wasted paper.

The "can you really not just look up at the overhead" argument doesn't suffice here, because lots of my professors teach quickly and don't allow enough time to read the overhead, write it down in the notebook, and then manage to catch the prof's explanation at the same time. Bring a laptop to class and you can eliminate the time wasted reading and copying and you can focus on what the prof is explaining.

The prof should make it clear that you shouldn't screw around online during class. If someone is distracting other people, they should be punished. There's nothing distracting about seeing the same powerpoint on the overhead on the guy's laptop screen in front of me. It is distracting when they are playing Yahoo Pool, though.

[/rant]

3/22/2006 4:42:51 PM

steer eh? haha

3/22/2006 4:44:55 PM

^ Yeah. Everything we do in that class is a fine-tuned constitutive relation of pattern-recognized abstractions.

3/22/2006 4:48:43 PM

I'm Confused

3/22/2006 5:59:03 PM

I cant pay attention when people watch porn in the middle of class.

3/22/2006 6:13:12 PM

just blow your load, then you don't have to worry about it for a while

[/chitchat]

3/22/2006 8:56:33 PM