Students can use this instant access to information to finish homework assignments and write term papers, but the pervasiveness of wireless Internet access is also creating new challenges for teachers and students, according to News-Leader. [via digg]
Students can be easily distracted by having an always-on connection, says Kenneth Green, who heads the Campus Computing Project in Encino, Calif.
“A lot of faculty don’t want to compete with what the students are doing, whether they’re doing e-mail or wandering the Web,” he says, adding that some professors object to wireless Web in classrooms because of students’ tendency to “sandbag” faculty or classmates, correcting their information in the middle of class with facts they’ve found on the Internet.
Research suggests that professors who are wary of the technology might have good reason. The more time students spend online in class, the worse their grades are, said Geri Gay, a professor of communication and information science at Cornell University who researches how students use the Internet. She asked students to record diaries about how they felt about their wireless laptops. Words such as “addicted” and “distraction” were prevalent.”
Comments
@ 14:27
To me, it is an instructor problem not a technology problem. I have spent almost the last 10 yeas teaching in classrooms with computers. The inattentive student has replaced doodling or sleeping with solitaire and IM.
Walking around, doing laptop free activities, and engaging students are the solutions to this dilemma. The baby need not go out with the digital bathwater.
@ 15:18
If we bar students from using laptops in the classroom because we think that the technology is distracting, then we may as well ban pencils and pens as well. If a student isn’t engaged, doesn’t want to pay attention, he/she will always find a way. If it isn’t Google it will be tic tac toe.
The real solution is to understand how the attention spans of students have changed. They’ve grown up in a world bombarded by media and they’ve become accustomed to multi-tasking and having immediate access to references. It’s a change, but it’s not a bad one. Our approaches to teaching should change with the time and advance instead of dragging our students back to us.
Intellagirl