Dear Colleagues,
I am writing to remind and encourage you to submit a proposal for the poster session at this year's Celebration of Teaching. We have extended the deadline to Tuesday, Oct. 25. You may submit online this year at www.oneonta.edu/cot. Directions for submission are found there. If you would prefer, email me your submission.
Hope to hear from you. We have some great things in store for all at the Celebration again this year!
Cynthia A. Lassonde, PhD.
Assistant Professor
Elementary Education and Reading
SUNY Oneonta
501 Fitzelle Hall
Ravine Parkway
Oneonta, NY
________________________________
From: Teaching Breakfast List on behalf of Jim Greenberg
Sent: Wed 10/19/2005 3:15 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: FW: Computers in college classrooms: 'A new way to not pay attention'
Tbers,
I'd be interested in how many of you (the teaching faculty) have had similar experiences to what is described here and if you have policies limited technology use in your classes.
Mr. James B. Greenberg
Director Teaching, Learning and Technology Center
Milne Library
SUNY College at Oneonta
Oneonta, New York 13820
email: [log in to unmask]
phone: 607-436-2701
fax: 607-436-3081
IM: oneontatltc
"Ignorance is curable, stupidity lasts forever"
Computers in college classrooms: 'A new way to not pay attention'
By ANDREA JONES <http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/1005/mailto:[log in to unmask]> <http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/1005/mailto:[log in to unmask]>
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 10/18/05
Click, click, click. Tap, tap, tap. Those are the modern-day sounds signifying that college students have mentally checked out of class.
Forget glazed-over eyes or drool pools on desks. Don't bother to check whether magazines are stuffed in their textbooks. Crossword puzzles are out.
E-mail checking is in.
In the past five years, colleges across Georgia and around the country have raced to create campuswide wireless networks that allow students to connect to the Internet wherever they are, from tree-lined quadrangles to trigonometry classes. And the instant access has generated some problems for instructors, who are trying to figure out how to get students to log off their computers long enough to listen.
Some instructors have banned laptop computers altogether. Others require that students with laptops sit in the front row so that classmates behind them can see exactly what's on their screens. Some say that if students decide to surf the Web instead of pay attention in class, it's not the instructor's job to play lifeguard and rescue them if they drown academically.
Georgia Tech junior Joseph Duero said he learned from experience to keep his computer stored securely in his backpack during lectures. Duero, a computer science major, said he used to try to type his notes on the computer during class but found himself wandering to non-class-related Web sites and chat rooms.
"It's distracting, and it's hard to not play on the Internet," he said. "If people are on their laptops, they are usually not listening to the professor."
Duero said he and other students once saw a classmate surfing pornography Web sites in the middle of a lecture. "The females in the class sitting behind him were really offended," he said. "They ended up telling the professor."
If students are given a chance to browse the Internet in class, they probably will, said Cornell University researcher Helene Hembrooke, who has co-authored studies of student laptop behavior for Cornell's Human Computer Interaction Laboratory.
In 2001 and 2002, Hembrooke and other researchers gave a group of students laptop computers and unrestricted access to the Internet. They then monitored students' usage and compared it with their end-of-course grades. The study showed that those who spent just a brief time clicking around different sites during class were not negatively affected, but the longer students browsed, the lower their grades.
Even when students knew they were being watched, they still went outside their course content, clicking on everything from stock-trading sites to social networks, Hembrooke said.
"If they got sucked into sites, they weren't getting the lecture content," she said.
Georgia Tech professor Bridget Heneghan, who teaches English composition to undergraduates, said she asks students who bring computers to sit up front. Just a few of the 25 students in her class bring them, but she said she's noticed them furtively clicking back to class-appropriate Web sites when she walks around the room.
"This is just a new way for them to not pay attention," Heneghan said.
Colleges, for the most part, have left laptop policies up to individual instructors.
Del Dunne, vice president for instruction at the University of Georgia, said UGA does not have an overall policy on using computers in classrooms. "The overall advantages [of the wireless network] far outweigh any negatives," he said.
Frank Limehouse, a professor in UGA's Terry College of Business, said he encourages students to bring laptops to class to help in taking notes. He said he doesn't take attendance in his large lecture classes, which have 200 to 300 students, and lets students decide how often to attend and what to do with their computers once they get there.
"If they come to class, I assume they are here to learn," Limehouse said.
Some instructors say they ban computers and other electronic devices to protect students sitting around the users from being distracted.
D.J. Wu, an associate professor in information technology management at Georgia Tech, said he enacted a no-laptop and no-cellphone policy to limit interruptions and extraneous noise during class discussion.
As for keeping students on task?
"We have lots of pop quizzes," Wu said.
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