[Engaget](http://www.engadget.com/2006/05/03/professors-banning-in-class-laptop-use/#comments) has an interesting little story today, one of professors banning laptops in the classroom.
I find this amusing. I used to teach, way back in graduate school, and I always figured that if students weren’t paying attention, I needed to work harder and make the subject more interesting. I taught in a computer lab, so the siren song of the internet was always there, but somehow students managed to participate and get some actual learning done.
As a student in the same type of classroom, I was always able to multitask — check a few emails here… write down a few notes there… it was dead simple. However, if I wasn’t going to pay attention, it wasn’t because of a computer screen. It was because of a boring lecture.
Face it: banning laptops ain’t going to help. Take away the laptops and you’ll still have students daydreaming or doodling in a notebook, so the competition for student interest needs to be won at the front of the classroom. I wonder: are the professors in question afraid the students aren’t learning, or are their egos suffering from all those clicking keys?
