I teach courses part time and I can tell you that this is easier said than done. While it sounds good in principle, and in some cases would indeed be beneficial, the fact is that students seem to be easily distracted and have short attention spans. The result is that as soon as you give them this "connection" you can easily lose them the compelling distraction of the Internet. The other problem is that they think they are capable of doing it all at once, but really they aren't without something giving.
Having said that, I am not a proponent of the technical solutions of somehow selectively denying access. Many have already pointed out the futility of this approach. We have even talked about having access denied at certain times based upon class schedule and user ID. But again, there are too many ways around that. I tell my students that they can have their laptops and other devices open and accessible during attendance and breaks etc, but during the lecture everything has to be shut down. I just tell them that even though I like to think I'm pretty good, I can't compete with the Internet. This becomes tougher in classes where it makes sense to use laptops to take notes and it has been debated and discussed quite a bit. Law schools seem to be one example of this. Pete Morrissey Syracuse University -----Original Message----- From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Constituent Group Listserv [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Chuck Keeler Sent: Friday, April 17, 2009 8:32 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Blocking iPhones Wouldn't it be easier (and beneficial) to get faculty to utilize technology in their classes rather than vilifying it ... or this too much to ask ... this device is the real connection to the student? __________________________________ Chuck Keeler -----Original Message----- From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Constituent Group Listserv [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of heath.barnhart Sent: Thursday, April 16, 2009 2:47 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Blocking iPhones I'm going to have to go with Jethro on this one. When I was in class generally you were warned at the beginning of the semester. Following that, a call during usually resulted in either being asked to leave or being humiliated by the professor, or both. Also Neil brings up another point in a later post, what's to keep them from just jumping on a regular 3G network. I think this should be a non-technical issue. A technical response is really a waste of time. Heath Jethro R Binks wrote: > On Thu, 16 Apr 2009, Emerson Parker wrote: > > >> The requests I'm seeing is from teachers who don't what people on their >> phones in class. >> > > Why are you singling out iPhones? > > This sounds like yet another case of technology being asked to provide a > solution to a social or political problem. And that is generally a recipe > if not for disaster, then bad feeling. > > How about, and here's me just thinking completely off the top of my head > for the first idea that comes to mind... the teacher asks people to turn > their phones off? > > If the request is regularly ignored, then local rules with defined > sanctions should be implemented and enforced. > > Jethro. > > . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . > Jethro R Binks > Computing Officer, IT Services, University Of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK > > ********** > Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent > Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. > -- Heath Barnhart Asst. Systems and Networking Admin Information Systems and Services Washburn University Topeka, KS 66621 ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/.
