5 ms·

In the lower grades, I think a case can be made that during the time they are in class, students should not have any other demands on their time. In contrast,

by jawns 12y ago

In the lower grades, I think a case can be made that during the time they are in class, students should not have any other demands on their time. In contrast, with college students, I don't think it's unreasonable to think that -- at least occasionally -- a student may need to "check out" from a lecture momentarily to deal with some pressing business, even if it means that he has to spend time later asking a classmate to fill him in on what he missed. For instance, maybe I'm in class, and I get an extremely important email and need to send an immediate reply. Maybe I'm a working-adult student and my babysitter has just IMed me. Maybe I manage the campus newspaper's website and someone just sent me a report of a critical bug that I need to deal with right away. This is all the sort of stuff I encounter regularly in the working world, and I don't think it's unreasonable to think that college students encounter it, too. Being able to keep open a laptop to deal with things like this is a lot less distracting than having to step outside the lecture hall to take an urgent phone call. Yes, putting away the laptops might slightly increase students' abilities to soak up the material, but (sorry, professors) sometimes the class you're sitting in is not your top priority, and sometimes that's OK. I occasionally had to skip class to chase down a hot story for the school newspaper, and I don't regret it a bit. So long as the student is using the privilege responsibly, I say let 'em keep the laptop open!

akuma73 12y ago
That's what your phone is for.
- vlunkr 12y ago
  I had a couple of professors that didn't allow cell phone use in their classes, and it was annoying, for all the reasons the original poster listed. I can understand not letting high school students use phones, but in college you are an adult with sometimes conflicting responsibilities.
  - jcromartie 12y ago
    That's a non sequitur. If an emergency comes up, and your phone rings, you leave the room and answer it.
    - nknighthb 12y ago
      > If an emergency comes up, and your phone rings, you fail the course. Some are even known to demand everyone place their phones, very much powered off, in a box on their desk at the start of class.
      - jcromartie 12y ago
        even if it is on vibrate?
  - victorhooi 12y ago
    As other posters have said, just leave the damn room to take a call. But seriously, are you so incredibly important that you cannot spend 60 minutes listening to a lecture? This generation (and yes I know that includes me) seem to have an incredibly inflated sense of self-worth, as if they're the centre of the universe. It's like those idiots who can't stop texting in the damn movie. The world will keep spinning if you don't answer that tweet for an hour - trust me. I had this exact same argument with a friend last week when we went to a three-hatted restaurant, and she insisted she needed to check her phone every few minutes, because apparently people would "panic" if they couldn't get in touch with her via chat. Surely if you're paying $200 for a dinner, you can at least enjoy the dinner and company around you without needing to tweet every 5 minutes.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
wvenable 12y ago
I think it would be considered rude to open up a full laptop and type out an email in the middle of a business meeting. But I do occasionally check my phone and even reply on it during meetings if it's not distracting. Anything more should require leaving the situation to open up a laptop.
- _delirium 12y ago
  I think it's the norm where I've worked that everyone starts meetings with their laptops already open. Sometimes it's not even really possible to participate without one, since people will expect you to refer to a PDF in the last email or go to an intranet site and whatnot. And lots of people take notes on the laptop as well, rather than relying on pen & paper. If it was a business meeting in the sense of meeting with someone external to the organization, that might be different, but internal meetings are very laptop-oriented.
- nknighthb 12y ago
  I don't think I've ever been in a scheduled meeting where at least one person wasn't actively using a laptop. Hell, even in the mid-90s, when I'd visit my dad's offices, I saw people going into meetings with what then passed for laptops all the time.
BruceIV 12y ago
I find your examples unconvincing. How many emails do you really get that are so urgent that they couldn't wait an hour? Why can't your babysitter text you (or, just IM on your smartphone)? Why are you the only person who can fix said critical bug (if it's fixable through the CMS, others should be able to handle it, if not, well, why are you running such terrible infrastructure when there are dozens of mature platforms?). Also, for things that are legitimately small and quick, it's surprising what you can get done with an SSH client on your phone - if it needs more than that, you're likely going to miss the rest of the lecture anyway, so why not leave?
tjr 12y ago
For instance, maybe I'm in class, and I get an extremely important email and need to send an immediate reply. Maybe I'm a working-adult student and my babysitter has just IMed me. Maybe I manage the campus newspaper's website and someone just sent me a report of a critical bug that I need to deal with right away. This isn't strictly a reply to jawns, but it's on a related topic that I've wondered about. Fifteen years ago, such instantaneous, ubiquitous communication was very rare. I went through college without having instant notification of anything whatsoever, as did pretty much everyone I knew at the time. Babysitters ran into issues fifteen years ago; there were bugs in websites fifteen years ago; there were critical emails being sent out fifteen years ago, but nobody expected constant, instant feedback because it was implausible, and everyone was okay with that. Are our problems today really that much more urgent than they were then, that we truly need to be constantly connected? Or is this imaginary, and since we in theory can respond instantly, people now expect that we must?
- TTPrograms 12y ago
  I don't think the issue is if we need to respond urgently, but rather if we want to respond urgently. Sure you can wait an hour until the end of lecture, but maybe you want to develop a capability and a reputation for putting out fires quickly. Do I really need to justify the value of this to the professor? The question is if I'm paying for a lecture is it reasonable for them to mandate my own non-disruptive activities in lecture. I don't think so. We also need to consider that professors are egotistical creatures (as all humans are), so they're going to oppose anything that detracts from the perceived value of their work. What's the balance here between improving student welfare and making professors happy?
- nknighthb 12y ago
  A few hundred years ago, nobody expected to go anywhere faster than a horse could take them there, why must we go faster now? Life changes. If people don't like that, there are still some very nice remote forests they can go live in.
  - tjr 12y ago
    A good point! After my comment above, I started thinking, well, a hundred years ago we expected response times in days or weeks via mail, rather than within hours via telephone or email. With the introduction of the telephone, there may well have been some people who felt communicating that quickly was needlessly rushed. I guess I still retain the wondering, though; with possible response times reduced to effectively instantaneous, are we losing anything? Is it good that anything we are doing can always be interrupted by something else?
watwut 12y ago
Most pressing mails can wait few hours and lecture will most likely end up after 90 minutes or sooner. Your critical bug will not be solved withing five minutes and campus newspaper's website being down for few hours is no big deal anyway. Finally, I would really like which school newspaper has so hot stories that you have to run to. And if it is really so critical, they can send text message on your muted phone and you will have to leave the lecture anyway. I'm not saying I want to ban laptops, just that your examples are very unconvincing. I get it, the class is very low priority to you, but if you are going to regularly fix bugs or write emails and then ask other to fill you in, you will be disturbing to others.
- jawns 12y ago
  >> campus newspaper's website being down for few hours is no big deal anyway I'm glad you didn't work for my campus newspaper. Several other people have echoed your comment that these are things that you can just as easily handle on your phone. But I think that misses the bigger point. If a professor can ban laptops, he can ban phones and tablets and all other communication devices. My overarching point is that devoting 100% of one's attention to a college lecture is not only not always necessary, but in some cases, not desirable; there are legitimate reasons why a student attending a lecture may want to receive communications, and legitimate reasons why he may wish to respond to those communications immediately.
jcromartie 12y ago
Isn't this what phones are for?

by jawns 12y ago

akuma73 12y ago

That's what your phone is for.

vlunkr 12y ago
I had a couple of professors that didn't allow cell phone use in their classes, and it was annoying, for all the reasons the original poster listed. I can understand not letting high school students use phones, but in college you are an adult with sometimes conflicting responsibilities.
- jcromartie 12y ago
  That's a non sequitur. If an emergency comes up, and your phone rings, you leave the room and answer it.
  - nknighthb 12y ago
    > If an emergency comes up, and your phone rings, you fail the course. Some are even known to demand everyone place their phones, very much powered off, in a box on their desk at the start of class.
    - jcromartie 12y ago
      even if it is on vibrate?
- victorhooi 12y ago
  As other posters have said, just leave the damn room to take a call. But seriously, are you so incredibly important that you cannot spend 60 minutes listening to a lecture? This generation (and yes I know that includes me) seem to have an incredibly inflated sense of self-worth, as if they're the centre of the universe. It's like those idiots who can't stop texting in the damn movie. The world will keep spinning if you don't answer that tweet for an hour - trust me. I had this exact same argument with a friend last week when we went to a three-hatted restaurant, and she insisted she needed to check her phone every few minutes, because apparently people would "panic" if they couldn't get in touch with her via chat. Surely if you're paying $200 for a dinner, you can at least enjoy the dinner and company around you without needing to tweet every 5 minutes.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]

wvenable 12y ago

I think it would be considered rude to open up a full laptop and type out an email in the middle of a business meeting. But I do occasionally check my phone and even reply on it during meetings if it's not distracting. Anything more should require leaving the situation to open up a laptop.

_delirium 12y ago
I think it's the norm where I've worked that everyone starts meetings with their laptops already open. Sometimes it's not even really possible to participate without one, since people will expect you to refer to a PDF in the last email or go to an intranet site and whatnot. And lots of people take notes on the laptop as well, rather than relying on pen & paper. If it was a business meeting in the sense of meeting with someone external to the organization, that might be different, but internal meetings are very laptop-oriented.
nknighthb 12y ago
I don't think I've ever been in a scheduled meeting where at least one person wasn't actively using a laptop. Hell, even in the mid-90s, when I'd visit my dad's offices, I saw people going into meetings with what then passed for laptops all the time.

BruceIV 12y ago

I find your examples unconvincing. How many emails do you really get that are so urgent that they couldn't wait an hour? Why can't your babysitter text you (or, just IM on your smartphone)? Why are you the only person who can fix said critical bug (if it's fixable through the CMS, others should be able to handle it, if not, well, why are you running such terrible infrastructure when there are dozens of mature platforms?). Also, for things that are legitimately small and quick, it's surprising what you can get done with an SSH client on your phone - if it needs more than that, you're likely going to miss the rest of the lecture anyway, so why not leave?

tjr 12y ago

For instance, maybe I'm in class, and I get an extremely important email and need to send an immediate reply. Maybe I'm a working-adult student and my babysitter has just IMed me. Maybe I manage the campus newspaper's website and someone just sent me a report of a critical bug that I need to deal with right away. This isn't strictly a reply to jawns, but it's on a related topic that I've wondered about. Fifteen years ago, such instantaneous, ubiquitous communication was very rare. I went through college without having instant notification of anything whatsoever, as did pretty much everyone I knew at the time. Babysitters ran into issues fifteen years ago; there were bugs in websites fifteen years ago; there were critical emails being sent out fifteen years ago, but nobody expected constant, instant feedback because it was implausible, and everyone was okay with that. Are our problems today really that much more urgent than they were then, that we truly need to be constantly connected? Or is this imaginary, and since we in theory can respond instantly, people now expect that we must?

TTPrograms 12y ago
I don't think the issue is if we need to respond urgently, but rather if we want to respond urgently. Sure you can wait an hour until the end of lecture, but maybe you want to develop a capability and a reputation for putting out fires quickly. Do I really need to justify the value of this to the professor? The question is if I'm paying for a lecture is it reasonable for them to mandate my own non-disruptive activities in lecture. I don't think so. We also need to consider that professors are egotistical creatures (as all humans are), so they're going to oppose anything that detracts from the perceived value of their work. What's the balance here between improving student welfare and making professors happy?
nknighthb 12y ago
A few hundred years ago, nobody expected to go anywhere faster than a horse could take them there, why must we go faster now? Life changes. If people don't like that, there are still some very nice remote forests they can go live in.
- tjr 12y ago
  A good point! After my comment above, I started thinking, well, a hundred years ago we expected response times in days or weeks via mail, rather than within hours via telephone or email. With the introduction of the telephone, there may well have been some people who felt communicating that quickly was needlessly rushed. I guess I still retain the wondering, though; with possible response times reduced to effectively instantaneous, are we losing anything? Is it good that anything we are doing can always be interrupted by something else?

watwut 12y ago

Most pressing mails can wait few hours and lecture will most likely end up after 90 minutes or sooner. Your critical bug will not be solved withing five minutes and campus newspaper's website being down for few hours is no big deal anyway. Finally, I would really like which school newspaper has so hot stories that you have to run to. And if it is really so critical, they can send text message on your muted phone and you will have to leave the lecture anyway. I'm not saying I want to ban laptops, just that your examples are very unconvincing. I get it, the class is very low priority to you, but if you are going to regularly fix bugs or write emails and then ask other to fill you in, you will be disturbing to others.

jawns 12y ago
>> campus newspaper's website being down for few hours is no big deal anyway I'm glad you didn't work for my campus newspaper. Several other people have echoed your comment that these are things that you can just as easily handle on your phone. But I think that misses the bigger point. If a professor can ban laptops, he can ban phones and tablets and all other communication devices. My overarching point is that devoting 100% of one's attention to a college lecture is not only not always necessary, but in some cases, not desirable; there are legitimate reasons why a student attending a lecture may want to receive communications, and legitimate reasons why he may wish to respond to those communications immediately.

jcromartie 12y ago

Isn't this what phones are for?