posted
You remember how people used to just fidgit, or sleep, or doodle (or take notes ) in class. Well, enter the digital age, the invention of the laptop and wireless internet.
Things I have observed people doing during class:
1. Read news from various new sites. My favourite one was a very left-wing-biased site. 2. Play cards- this is a big one. In most large classes at one time, some one will be playing one of the solitaire games that comes with windows. 3. Minesweeper. Much less popular, but nevertheless occaisionally played. 4. The Internet in general- general surfing. 5. Updating/Reading Livejournals. I can just imagine the entry: "I'm soooooo bored." 5. Playing Age of Empires. A boy was playing this in my Tuesday Politics class. While we're all sitting there he's got a full scale war going on! 6. Movies and tv shows. Seated next to the Age of Empires boy was a girl watching "The Royal Tennenbaums", without sound or subtitles. She was obviously quite familiar with it. 7. Various arcade-style games. 8. Semi-porn. Two boys sitting there, looking at a few scantily clad photos. O.o 9. MSN messenger.
Anyone else got In-class Laptop stories?
If I see any others will add them.
Just to let you know- I subscribe to the old paper and pencil variety of student. I also take notes (although some are rather nicely embellished with little people).
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
Wow. I feel very out of date. No-one at my uni ever brings a laptop to lectures except the lecturer.
Posts: 1528 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
There were a couple lectures last semester in which I would use my laptop. My main non-academic use was just IMing, though I would sometimes play some mindless game or write a letter.
Posts: 2149 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
My county is spending $63 million to give every student a $219 labtop next year. There will be seven technicians for the whole county -- 60,000 students.
It's supposed to increase productivity.
I have friends who found out who got the winning bid and already have a system hack ready to go to get rid of all the filters and controls and so forth.
I. Can't. Wait.
Posts: 515 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
I surf on my laptop during classes, but I also manage to pay attention enough to get the material very well and be able to help my classmates. One professor even gave me permission to do it, because it meant I fidgeted less and learned BETTER.
posted
I find them immensely annoying, both as a speaker and an audience member. Back in the day, I thought it was rude of people to read newspapers and do crosswords during a lecture (ok, I do my fair share of doodling, but it doesn't involve rustling paper noises). Laptops are far worse. Invariably creating disrupting noises. I find sitting behind someone at a lecture while they surf the web incredibly distracting.
Posts: 551 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
I find it a lot easier to take notes and write if I'm typing, and I'm a hell of a lot less likely to doodle and not pay attention...
But of course, I've at least once played my SNES emulator instead of paying attention in class. ...But it was Freshman English, I mean, come ON.
Posts: 4816 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
I always wanted a laptop to take to classes, because I type much faster than I write longhand, and my preferred note taking style has always been to write down the full lecture, verbatim. They didn't make an Amiga laptop, though, and at that point I was still holding out against getting an IBM compatible machine. Plus the laptops back then weighed a ton and had batteries with really short lives.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
Spot on, Mack. Without my lappy, I fidget and hear nothing. With it, I'm a listening, learning machine. And yeah, my friends ask me to bring it, they know they'll get poked and wispered to less.
Posts: 186 | Registered: Dec 2000
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posted
I'm not saying it's a bad thing. I just think it's amusing. I mean, playing Age of Empires in a lecture! It's crazy!
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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quote:I find them immensely annoying, both as a speaker and an audience member. Back in the day, I thought it was rude of people to read newspapers and do crosswords during a lecture (ok, I do my fair share of doodling, but it doesn't involve rustling paper noises). Laptops are far worse. Invariably creating disrupting noises. I find sitting behind someone at a lecture while they surf the web incredibly distracting.
Mike! You made a straightforward post - do you realize that?
I think schools should go back to sharing slateboards, chalk, and rote memorization, myself.
posted
I don't know, it worked for "Anne of Green Gables".
Of course, she also almost died in childbirth with her first child, who lived one day. Eh, it's a trade off. Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
I sometimes bring my laptop to class, my CS class most of the time the professor, for some odd reason, just writes code on an overhead. It's very weird, my options are: Take it long hand (the guy who sits next to me does this but I would never do that) Type it out, much more useful so I do this when I bring a laptop. Read a book (OK I feel bad about this but he never looks up from thee overhead and there's like 90 students) Go to sleep, I'd feel worse except I don't try to, it's just that it's very, very boring and at the end of the day.
::shrug::
The problem is when I bring the laptop in for that class, it's there for all my classes. Mostly I just use it during breaks in my schedule, but there is one lecture class (about 100) that I went an entire month (and a half!) without being able to make it through and not spend at least five minutes of it unconscious. So my compromise is that when I bring my laptop I turn it on, and then I never pay full attention, but I never go to sleep either. I obviously turn off all sound, and I do turn the screen way down and try to slant it so it's not bothering other people but I type loud.
posted
One kid in my ancient history class always brings his laptop to class. The one time I sat behind him he was typing in huge like 72 font things like "I WANT TO KILL MYSELF THIS IS SO BORING" all in caps and what note because he hated the class, and all the girls around him giggled and nodded.
I was only annoyed because I loved the lecture.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
The only class I ever dared bring my laptop to was graphic design, where I'd have way too much to keep up with to do much else. But iTunes.... ooh, I love my iTunes.
Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
It's rude. "Taking notes" is a poor excuse for not keeping your ears open and your mind attentive.
Posts: 551 | Registered: Mar 2005
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quote:I always wanted a laptop to take to classes, because I type much faster than I write longhand, and my preferred note taking style has always been to write down the full lecture, verbatim.
I have a friend who records lectures on her iPod. I don't know if she transcribes it later.
In general, I wouldn't take a laptop to, say, a math class where there's no good reason to have one and where the classes are small enough that it would be very distracting. Actually, I would have trouble using a laptop in most of my classes because the desks are those stupid little half-desks that fold over your lap and are a pain to use if you aren't sitting in one that was designed for your preferred writing hand. Wow, that was a lot of phrases.
However, if there are already computers in the room, I won't hesitate to use them. I spent most of my time in Electrical Networks reading Hatrack. If the teacher uses any sort of gimmick (homework due every class period, pop quizzes) to force me to come to class, I don't feel obligated to pay attention. I do my best not to distract anyone though, which means no excessive typing or clicking. Also, if I have something to occupy 50% of my attention, I focus better on the lecture with the other 50%. If I have nothing to partially distract me, I start daydreaming and completely miss the lecture.
Posts: 3546 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
Being that my computer is made of several pieces and doesn't fit in my backpack, i don't take it to class.
One of the professors that I work for recently became the director of e-learning here, and his classes have the lecture recorded. You can log into the class website and hear the entire lecture complete with large image of the whiteboard (that actually shows it as he writes on it.) His lecture are also available as podcasts.
If anyone is interested I think the podcasts can be found from one of his blogs (look under the profile for the rest of his blogs) He teaches organic chemistry I and II (of 3). I realize the topic isn't the most popular topic in the world, but its what he teaches. Personally I wish he had been doing this back when I took his classes. How nice would it be to get to see the lecture a second time or actually see one that you missed.
Edit: I think this is a superior solution to bringing a laptop to class.
posted
If I didn't have my laptop to take notes on, I would not be doing nearly as well in law school. Hands down that's the biggest difference between undergrad and law school - I produce usable notes in an outline format the first time I type them in.
Of course, everyone uses a laptop in lecture here. Everyone.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
I dunno - one of my study techniques involved my lecture shorthand notes which I then re-wrote long-hand later on - it was a good opportunity to reflect on the lecture, flesh out the thoughts - jiggle the memory nodes as it were -
Posts: 5609 | Registered: Jan 2003
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posted
Speaking from the professor's point of view, I can tell you that giving the appearance of not paying attention, even if you are, is really, really frustrating. People don't understand when I ask them not to talk or get up and move around or read their papers when I'm teaching; the truth is, it's not for their benefit--it's for mine. Aside from the fact that playing games while in class is kind of rude, it's also distracting to your professor (and to who knows how many students around you...this sort of thing drove me nuts when I was on the other side of the podium). All I'm saying is, try to see it from the perspective of the person doing the teaching. You may be hindering others more than you think.
Posts: 4077 | Registered: Jun 2003
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quote:I dunno - one of my study techniques involved my lecture shorthand notes which I then re-wrote long-hand later on - it was a good opportunity to reflect on the lecture, flesh out the thoughts - jiggle the memory nodes as it were -
That's what I did undergrad. In law school, I'm making an outline for most classes. The ability to cut and past, drag and drop, and use outlining feature means I focus more on meaning and connections between concepts than typing.
posted
In recent conferences, I've used the mike on my PDA to record notes, then dumped the sound file into Dragon to transcribe it for me.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
I'm capable of typing one thing while carrying on a completely unrelated conversation, but I'm not capable of doing the same thing when I'm writing by hand. Given that, I think that I'd actually be able to bring more of my attention to bear on the lecture while transcribing it into my computer than I would while transcribing it into a spiral notebook.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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Back when I used to lug a (11+ pound) laptop to school to take notes (which I stopped doing because the programs that were able to actually handle drawing chemical diagrams were so SLOWWWWW!), it didn't hook up to no intarweb-thingy. All it did was take notes -- and in a couple of my classes, there'd be one or two others with a laptop as well.
As a teacher, I'd be torn between something that gets certain of my students to STOP disrupting class (and if they have an off-topic question, and I tell them to look it up, they could do so right then ), and the frustration Megan and Ic are talking about.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
I think part of my problem is that whether or not I have my laptop out, I always give the appearance of not paying attention.
But I am paying attention, even with my laptop out.
When I didn't have a laptop or graphing calculator (thanks be to the gods of programming who could make blackjack programs), I always had one piece of looseleaf paper that I toon notes on, and a spiral notebook where I was writing a story or a novel.
I managed to write two novels in my four years as an undergrad. Posts: 14745 | Registered: Dec 1999
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