Laptops: Should be allowed in classrooms

Photo by: Thuy Tien/ Flicker

In the modern world, we have witnessed a great war with technology. This war has now came into the academic field as well. Students are given options to buy online text or paper text for their courses, however the price of e-text is lower than the paper textbook which lets the students to buy it online. Furthermore, many instructors ban the usage of laptops in their class, which leads to the question how will the student co-relate the class notes with the text?

Amanda Hecimovic mentioned in Doing More Harm than Good: Laptops Be Banned from University Classrooms? that students use laptops for non- academic purposes during the class time. This is completely fine as it would not affect the learning process of the fellow classmates and moreover, it's the freedom of a student to study in which so ever way he/she is comfortable.

Melanie Stamps, an English senior in UTeach department program stated:

" There's a difference between high school and college, in college we're adults, If I choose to not pay attention and use my laptop in class, then that's my adult decision".

Amanda also said that laptops used for just note-taking can still have negative consequences which is not the case with majority of the students. Julia Brinkmeier, molecular bio medicine programme student told in an article that:

''Laptops mean that note taking has become easy, they have great visualization tools, they are easier to carry around than books, and sharing is instant. Also it saves a lot of time when solving complex math which I appreciate''.

Amanda also mentioned that note-taking by hand is still important but what about the wastage when we need to edit the notes later on when we study them? Laptops are eco-friendly as we do not need to waste the paper while taking the notes from the lectures and scheduling our day also becomes easy as one can easily note down all the important dates and deadline in the class by setting reminders so that he/she does not forget later on, which is not possible with the traditional pen and paper style.

As the sharing of notes is easy when taken on laptop because one can easily transfer them to their mobile phones and access them while travelling. Whereas, if we talk about getting the pictures of notes, those are not engaging and clear enough for someone to study.

An article informs that laptops allow students to make a quick search when they do not understand something and continue with the class as digital representation helps a lot in understanding things in a better way. Multitasking is an additional benefit for students when they have laptops with them as they can make presentations, finish assignments and solve problems at the same time which is a modern way of study.

It is clear from this that if students use laptops for there coursework like note-taking, digital study and do not browse facebook , twitter and other social networking or shopping sites, then laptops would be a great boon for the students in their academic field during their classes.


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