kids bring laptops to class?

apumic
Wed, 05 Apr 2006 13:14:58 +0000

In response to TAs and/or profs caring whether students use their laptops in class, I TA for a prof and last semester I had a student opening her email, chatting on AIM and not really paying attention to a very important lecture the entire period–right in front me, her TA!
I honestly wanted to ask her what she was thinking, but honestly the prof didn’t care. We joked about it and basically were just kinda like, “Well, if she fails the midterm, we’ll know why.”
Honestly, though, college really is quite different in that students are given far more responsibility AND freedom. Whereas high school students and freshmen have been shown (via psychological studies and research) to believe that the forces in their lives are all external (i.e., they have little power to influence what happens around them), college upper-classmen see the world as something we can mold.