Laptop In The Classroom

338 Words2 Pages
Laptops in the classroom The classroom is rapidly evolving. It is common place today to find students required to bring programmable and graphing calculators of a specific brand and model, a teacher provided with an Internet-wired computer whose output is projected onto a screen, or students in computer laboratories full of desktop computers connected to each other and to the Internet. And most recently, some colleges and universities have mandated that each student own and bring to class a laptop computer with a wireless connection to the Internet. All of this technology is introduced in the hope that the tools will augment teaching and learning.Therein lies the challenge. The teacher is faced with the sometimes daunting task of effectively integrating the electronic device into the day’s lecture. A variety of approaches to enhancing the classroom experience are being taken by educational institutions. For example, the University of Arizona, Tucson, is developing learning centers, i.e., classrooms equipped with state-of-the-art technology in which professors use instant-feedback and multiple-choice voting. Results are electronically tallied allowing the professor to adjust a lecture to provide additional information as needed. Wireless networks are no longer experimental and have been built into school classrooms and libraries. These include the University of Florida, Colorado State University, and at Greenville College in Illinois where students can wander virtually anywhere on campus and be connected. Much of the available literature for laptop computing discusses topics such as logistics, hardware requirements, training for faculty on the use of computers, and laptop management. Precious little has focused on pedagogy. This is what we address in this paper. We ask: How can the instructor do a better job of teaching given that a laptop computer
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