Cutting Net Access Out Of The Classroom
from the how-quickly-things-change dept
Remember when colleges were working overtime to figure out how to get internet access into the classroom? In 1996 I ended up on a committee trying to figure out exactly how we were going to get an ethernet drop to every seat in a new university building. It was very important that students be able to surf the web from every seat. I guess we didn’t really think everything through – because now some colleges are trying to implement solutions that block students from using the internet while they’re in the classroom. It turns out (not surprisingly) that students are using the access to surf the web and send instant messages, rather than pay attention to the lesson. There are a few different technologies being tested out, but my favorite is the one that lets the professor display to the class any email or instant message that’s being sent within the classroom (though, I wonder how well that actually works).
