Laptops in The Classroom: Favor Them or No?

If you walk into a random American college classroom, you’ll find out technology has shifted the balance of learning. There’s always a handful of students who have their laptops out of their bags and ready to take notes. In other classrooms, desktop computers may be made available, such as those classes in the computer science, journalism, or English departments. However, is this new technology benefiting our students? Are they adapting to this new environment well and learning all that’s available to their disposal?

One benefit of this is to the teachers. They can now make full-use of programs such as Blackboard or WebCT. On these programs, students can view documents, audio, video, and take tests. Many colleges and universities use this strictly for their online courses, and only partially for their regular courses. However, if faculty received the right technical training, they could make this a component of their learning environment. They could assign homework on WebCT and give out less papers in class. Honestly, I don’t think we’re far from the day were the deans of college departments require laptops for ALL students.

Another benefit to the classroom is the software that laptops have on them. Microsoft Office in particular is a useful set of applications for any student to use. If an instructor puts a PowerPoint on WebCT, the student can download it through Microsoft Power Point instead of the teacher running off a set amount of copies, essentially a “paperless” classroom. Furthermore, all tests and quizzes can be downloaded into Microsoft Word, making it easier to type the answers to all the questions. The student can then email the test back to the teacher.

Third, laptops are an important component to Smartboard. They can both benefit the student if the teacher shares a website. They can go to the links, and search for items that their instructor has pointed out might be useful. Furthermore, they can bookmark this on their laptops so they always have it a click away. 

Next, requiring a laptop of each student is going to cut the price of textbooks dramatically low. Since everyone now has a computer, e-books will become more readily available to students. You download them off the Internet and rent them for a semester. These are more than half the price of a regular textbook, and students wouldn’t have such a heavy load in their book bags, which would eventually lead to back pain if regular textbooks continued the trend.