Why You Shouldn’t Use Laptops or Tablets in Class

The internet has revolutionized how we get information. I just mused about this last week as I told one of my students about how I used to plan a day around going to the library to search the card catalogs and then plopping myself down in the library aisles to research volumes of books.

20 years later, personal computers made it possible to get instantaneous information in everyone’s homes, and now laptops, smartphones, and even smartwatches make it possible to have all data that we need wherever we are.  So why is it that laptops and tablets are dumbing down our brightest students?

The reason: Students can’t multi-task; actually, nobody can! During lectures, the students – especially the best ones – open up their laptops (or tablets) so they can take notes.  This makes perfect sense because it’s probably faster than writing long hand and it’s certainly easier to read later.  So what’s the problem?

Well, there wouldn’t be one if all the students could see were their documents, but because they can also see their text messages, emails, and on yeah, Facebook, Instagram, and SnapChat pop ups every few seconds, their attention and ability to think about lecture topics is reduced down to well, nil. That’s right.  Although the student thinks they are multitasking by writing down “important” information, they aren’t actually engaging (learning it or applying this knowledge) with the concepts.  Instead, like robots, they’re taking dictation. Period. They’re also communicating with friends by responding to social media, which in and of itself requires tremendous brain activity to juggle. This is the real problem.

By not allowing their brains to learn and engage because they are filling their brain capacities with social media, they lose the class lecture time that they used to have to absorb necessary information.  The Washington Post just published an article “Why smart kids shouldn’t use laptops in class” that discusses the results from several studies about how students use electronics in the classroom.

It’s interesting that teachers allow laptops but not cell phones in class.  Looks like studies like this will give teachers the right to make the classroom a place where students engage in discussions and take notes the good ol’ fashioned way!