news-leader.com — Students can use this instant access to information to finish homework assignments and write term papers, but the pervasiveness of wireless Internet access is also creating new challenges for teachers and students.
Aug 13, 2006 View in Crawl 4
stopislamssAug 14, 2006
oh no! you've discorvered the great dearth of integrity in public schoolstoo bad there's not a hotfix for that
electrobotAug 14, 2006
For university/college the professor should have the ability to turn off access to the internet with 3 settings:1) turn off all wifi/ethernet access (in the classroom)2) turn on access to the university's network (internal webpage, school email and network shares)3) turn on unlimited (not bandwidth, but rather unfiltered) internet accessThis should be implemented with either a key or a "paging-like switch" (think grade school pa system) that the prof has access to from the front of the class.This way when the prof is done the lecture or wants to show something online he can do so and when he wants the student's full attention he can get rid of the "wifi distraction".
electrobotAug 14, 2006
The problem with any registration/database is that people make mistakes and students could also be monitored this way.As for having the access controlled through a piece of software (bored students with computer knowledge == hackers; networks are created and maintained by people and people make mistakes; other unforseen issues)
returnofmalvAug 14, 2006
"How could a good teacher honestly complain about being corrected? If they are wrong, they are wrong. Who cares if it was a student that corrected them."Depends if the student is a dick about it or not. I've seen my fair share of what I consider to be hecklers. Their only purpose is to validate how much better they are than everyone else in the room.They generally tend to be fat and white.
louiscAug 14, 2006
I don't see the big deal. The kids who aren't serious, are gonna go on myspace and do their crap there instead of falling asleep on their desk or listening to their ipod through their hoodie or just simply not paying attention. The kids who are serious are gonna listen, take notes on their computer, and do things that are productive. Wifi doesn't change anything. Slackers will always be slackers :)
dubie556Aug 14, 2006
I don't see how this is even a problem. If you want to play around on the Internet instead of listening to a lecture...do it...or even better, just don't go to class. Its not like people are being forced to go to college; the education only returns what you put into it. In that sense, baning wireless Internet in classes is counterproductive. Any tool that helps students understand or relate the material in a more efficient way is worth whatever drawbacks come with it. If as a college student, which I am, you can't handle the "distractions" of Internet surfing during class, I weep for how distracted you'll be in the business world. If as a professor, you feel its your duty to teach, I want to be in your class. If as a professor, you feel you need to force students to learn and avoid distraction, I need to avoid you and you need to go teach high school.
nerd05Aug 14, 2006
It's all in the implementation. If you spend a bunch of money on some laptops and just dump them onto the students' laps, without training either them or the teachers, you are wasting your time and money. However, if you actually take the time to show the teachers how to use the computers, and teach them how to make the technology part of the curriculum, and make homework computer-based, then give students the training, then it is going to benefit them. Yes, the constant availability of internet access will pose a potential distraction, but if the teacher keeps an eye out, it won't be. A one-to-one laptop program will do great things. However, it has to be put into action by people who know what they're talking about, and they can't do a half assed job of it.Just my $0.02
manwithaplanAug 14, 2006
@nerd05The problem here is that you are adding curriculum. At some point the benefit of increased efficiency in having laptops is overshadowed by the burden of the distraction. From my personal experience viewing my classmates at college, laptops are very distracting (IM, games, web). The search function offers little more relevant knowledge than a good professor and textbook. The screen is little better for viewing material than a teacher controlled projector and blackboard. The note taking ability is IMHO much less efficient than handwriting (think sigma notation, diagrams, integrals, etc, that are very slow to write on computers).So what exactly is it that computers do better? Oh yeah, say that the teacher is wrong. Once again from my classroom experience, when a teacher is refuted by an Internet wielding student, the student has no idea what they are talking about. It is about 50/50 that the student is wrong (likely because they didn't pay attention) while the teacher was right. The smarter students that successfully correct the teachers usually do so without the Internet, while paying close attention.While there are some applications that computers are good for, there are many that they are not. I think that the classroom is a bad application.