Andrew Po-Chih Hu
Professor Slobod
English 113B
6 March 2012
Top It with a Laptop
Walking on the
campus of California State University Northridge, you can see students walking,
studying, socializing, and using their laptops; if you look around, you can see
there are laptops everywhere. We not only are in a world of high technology,
also we are in the United States, a place that is high-tech developed and with
fast media transportation, so laptops become a tool for students to learn, and
its usage is increasing on university campus. The use of laptop helps us do a
lot of things faster, easier, more eco-friendlier, and unlimited, like
communicating, updating, typing, and even studying. Whether personal laptop
usage in lecture classes’ classroom would help students learn is debatable, but
since laptops can help the process of learning become more efficient, personal
laptop usage should be allowed in all the classes’ lecture rooms that
California State University Northridge is offering because it is actually more
beneficial than detrimental to college students.
Besides using
laptops on campus as a devise for communicating through social networks and
instant messengers, surfing webs, updating with news, watching videos,
listening to music, or playing online games for relaxation, it helps students
by “rethinking and redesigning common spaces [in school] into anywhere, any
time learning environment” that enriches the education they are receiving
(Wolff). Statistics significantly show that about “96.2 percent of students
used university common spaces directly or indirectly related to learning,” and
they do research, school work, exam preparations, and a lot more (Wolff). Since
a lot of college students have their laptops with them while they are on
campus, why not expand the usage into lecture classrooms to abound and increase
the efficiency of the learning process?
With the use of
laptops during lecture, students who could not write fast enough or with poor
handwriting can take good and readable notes that they can use for study later
and be able to improve a lot more by having the chance to better understand the
materials. Students can also refer to their text that is electronically provide
by their instructors, their electronic textbooks, and “look up research
described by the instructors during lecture” to clarify any confusion, which
sometimes is really helpful to international students and students with
disabilities (Aylesworth-Spink). With the help of their laptops, students can figure
out if they have questions and immediately ask their instructors without
finding questions after class and going back and forth to visit their
instructors during office hours to get things clarified; this just makes
question solving faster and more efficient. Furthermore, because a lot of time
instructors will electronically provide their students with handouts, articles,
or worksheets that are required during lectures, instead of printing them out,
students can read and use them through their personal laptops in classrooms to
save time from printing, money for ink and papers, and be more eco-friendly at
the same time due to the decrease of paper usage. We never really think about
how many trees we cut down to produce the paper we use to take notes and print schoolwork.
While getting a valuable education is important, we can do it more
eco-efficient by using personal laptops in lecture classrooms.
Sometimes the
use of personal laptops in classrooms during lectures can be a distraction to a
student and his or her fellow classmates because they use their laptops for
something other than learning. On the other hand, even if college students are
not allowed to use their personal laptop in a classroom during lecture, there
is no guarantee that students will be paying attention and participating in the
class; what is true is “students who really want to learn will take the
opportunity to get the fullest knowledge out from the lecture and put their
effort into understanding the materials,” says a graduate student and
supplemental course instructor, George Fekaris, at California State University
Northridge (Fekaris). This can actually become a lesson about making a wise and
correct choice for personal laptop usage during class for college students,
which can help them gain self-control over temptations, gain responsibility for
their own study, and value the benefits technology brings to high quality
education. Still, students sometimes get bored from the lecture, forget they
are in a classroom and may make the wrong decision and not take proper
advantage of personal laptop usage to dedicate to their learning in class by
visiting inappropriate websites.
Distractions occur when students
are surfing on the web, using social networks, playing online games, and not
paying attention to the lecture. But the negative influence brought by Internet
could not entirely obliterate the positive improvement personal laptop usage in
classroom brings to learning. We can decrease the distraction and increase the efficiency
personal laptops bring to learning by limiting the access of the internet. The Internet
wireless network in classrooms can be set to certain limited access. While the
lecture is going on, the instructors can block students from the access to the
social websites, online games, and online videos. And if any of these services
are needed in class, the instructors can simply unlock the block for students’
access. Or the school could develop a software program that requires the
students who want to use a personal laptop to be connected to the classroom central
control, which is operated by the instructor to monitor the laptop usage in the
classroom.
These solutions above seems
doable, yet hard to achieve, and what truly will makes laptop usage in lecture
classrooms be beneficial rather than detrimental to all college students, is to
make students realize it is their own choice to pursue a higher education and the
importance of education. After all, the invention of the computer and now
laptop is to help people be more efficient at doing things and multiply the
result of learning with half the effort and energy. It is up to the individuals
to determine what is best for them.
Although the use of personal
laptops in lecture classrooms is not necessary, instructors understand how
personal laptops can be really helpful to students and bring up the quality of
learning at the same time. What professors might worry about is they cannot be
checking students’ personal laptops every single second while they are in the
classroom. Even if the students are taking notes, “because the eyes of the
students are on the screens of their personal laptops, I cannot feel the
attention students are giving me and the interactions between us might reduce,”
said an English professor at California State University Northridge (Slobod).
We can solve this by creating a software to have students install to their
personal laptops and connect to the instructors’ laptops or desktops while they
are in the classrooms, by using this program to instantly transfer notes and
lecture PowerPoint slides from the instructors’ computer screens to the
students’ personal laptop screens. This will make the lecture more easy to both
instructors and students, and create more interactions between them. We also
decrease the use of papers, markers, and chalks for the instructors at the same
time. Instructors will not be so tired writing on the board all the time.
It is a tendency that personal
laptops usage in classrooms will increase and in the future will no longer be
prohibited. But first we will have to find a way that makes the experience of
using a personal laptop in lecture classrooms less distracting and will not interfere
with learning, but at the same time acknowledging the help laptops can bring to
education. Overall, the benefit of using a laptop in class is much more than
the deficits. Students of California State University Northridge should be
allowed to use laptops or devises like tablets in lecture classrooms.
Works Cited
Aylesworth-Spink, Shelley. "Using Laptops in University Classes,
Lectures." Suite101.com. Universities @ Suite 101, 6 Mar. 2010.
Web. 28 Feb. 2012.
<http://shelley-aylesworth-spink.suite101.com/using-laptops-in-university-classes-lectures-a210071>.
Fekaris, George. Personal interview. 23 Feb. 2012.
Slobod, Cheryl. Personal interview. 1 Mar. 2012.
Wolff, Bill. "Laptop Use in
University Common Spaces." (EDUCAUSE Quarterly). Educause
Quarterly. Web. 29 Feb. 2012. <http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE
Quarterly/EDUCAUSEQuarterlyMagazineVolum/LaptopUseinUniversityCommonSpa/1
57384>.
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