By Ali Siemens (Staff Writer) – Email
As I sit here in class, I look around and see one guy on his fantasy football website, a few people on Facebook, another guy watching Kenny vs. Spenny and one girl Googling “pregnancy symptoms.” I am also not paying attention – I am writing this article while I should be taking notes on the lecture.
When students arrive on the first day of class in either September or January, and the professor hands around the anticipated syllabus, students usually look at 3 main sections: the percentage of the midterm and final exam, how many books they have to buy, and whether or not laptops are permitted in class.
Professors are finally catching on that allowing laptops in class is nothing more than a disruption and annoyance. To be fair, laptops do have their positives. You can take notes quicker and, well, that’s it. Other than that they offer no help.
The situation is always the same: students come in with their laptops and it’s a mad frenzy as everyone fights for the 6 electrical outlets in the classroom. From there, they open up their PC or Mac and immediately sign onto Facebook. While sitting behind them, you usually get to see what their friends are up to. If you’re lucky, you get to see pictures from Mirage of people being sloppy drunk and wearing “sexy” clothes.
Students use the argument that laptops aid their learning because they can take notes quicker – although partially true, does this mean it’s impossible to write notes by hand? Laptops have not always been accessible, and our parents and grandparents made it through university without lugging their typewriters from class to class. Laptops are handy, but they are not necessary to get through an hour or so of note taking.
Even thought note-typing does benefit some of the students using their laptops, the clicking of the keyboard is a huge aggravation to students who are doing it the old fashioned way. Similar to the guy who won’t stop clicking his pen from ‘on’ to ‘off,’ there seem to be different breeds of typists. There is always someone with fake nails, which increases the volume of click, and the aggressive typist, you know, the guy who is typing like the keys are going to escape from underneath him.
It’s great that they are getting down the notes, but their peers are making eyes at each other trying to find out if they are the only one bothered by the insane clunking noises being emitted from people’s portable computers. So now the lap-toppers have the notes, and other diligent studenta are thieved of what they had intended to do properly.
Society has been bombarded with technology on every level; everyone is attached to their iPhone or Blackberry Messenger; suddenly it’s cool to start carrying iPads around and bringing them out at parties. Now laptops are becoming the norm, and students are bringing them to every class. Engage in your learning, instead of bothering everyone else by searching Facebook’s latest mobile uploads of a drunk guy passed out with Sharpie drawings all over his face.
Good timing, my lecture is over.
