Thursday, May 22, 2008
Classroom surfing ban?
This isn't totally on-topic (kid-tech news), because it's primarily about adults: college students' in-class surfing habits, from a professors slightly angst-ridden perspective. But it could be on the horizon of high school teachers and students too. "I should be clear that there is no good a priori argument against multitasking. The case is at best an empirically-informed hunch about what is the best way to teach. I see some power to a parentalism argument that teachers should ban surfing because it impedes students’ ability to learn," blogs Yale law professor Ian Ayres. But, hey, he offers some good reasons. "Surfing and game playing in particular can be very distracting - both visually and in the signal they send to others that you don’t care about class." Do law professors always state the obvious?: "Multitasking also makes students less present as participants in class discussion. Surfing doesn’t stop students from taking notes, but it degrades the quality of their attention." The there's just one problem: "There is a growing sense of entitlement not just to surf but to keep your professor in the dark about whether you are surfing or not."
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