Tangled in an endless web of distractions
Colleges worry about always-plugged-in students
It was supposed to be a quick diversion, Katie Inman told herself last week as she flipped open her laptop. She had two tests to study for, three problem sets due, a paper to revise. But within minutes, the MIT sophomore was drawn into the depths of the Internet, her work shunted aside.“I had just closed Facebook
, but then I reopened it. It’s horrible,’’ said Inman, a mechanical engineering major. “I would type a sentence for my paper, and then get back on Facebook.’’
, but then I reopened it. It’s horrible,’’ said Inman, a mechanical engineering major. “I would type a sentence for my paper, and then get back on Facebook.’’Desperate for productivity, Inman did something many of her classmates at one of the most wired campuses would find unfathomable: She installed a program that blocks certain websites for up to 24 hours. No social networking. No e-mail. No aimless surfing.
While Inman took matters into her own hands, some MIT professors are urging college leaders across the country to free students from their tether to technology. Over the past decade, schools raced to connect students to the Internet — in dorms, classrooms, even under the old oak tree. But now, what once would have been considered heresy is an active point of discussion: pulling the virtual plug to encourage students to pay more attention in class and become more adept at real-life social networking.
“I have been a bit skeptical about the value of making an entire campus wireless,’’ said Lawrence Bacow, president of Tufts University and former chancellor of MIT, where he was a professor when it began wiring all classrooms in the mid-1990s. “It seems like everyone is always plugged in and always distracted.’’
While I understand the quandry, and fully support any professor who wants to ban anything in particular from his or her class, the notion of cutting students off from parts of the Internet altogether while on campus is far from the right solution. Like any form of censorship, it ultimately will do more damage than benefit.
ReplyDeleteStudents need to learn how to manage their time in the face of distractions, for distractions are out there in the real world. Perhaps universities need to do better at teaching students to manage their time; perhaps high schools do. But college is not supposed to be a prison, and is not supposed to cut students off from the real world. The notion of universities that try to block off Internet access to a wide range of cites is absurd. It patronizes and even dehumanizes the students (and faculty, and anybody else who has to put up with the blockages), gets in the way of somebody who might be doing something legitimate with the Internet, and makes the "college bubble" all that much worse.
Yes, students are too distracted. No, cutting them off from social media, cat videos on the Internet, or anything else of the sort is not the answer.
I have no idea why they installed wireless access in the classrooms. At the very least it should be possible to turn off internet access in the classrooms during one's own class. You know, by a switch at the front, say. What did they think would happen? Students WOULDN'T surf the web in class?
ReplyDeleteI forbid all electronic devices in class. I don't care what the rest do.
ReplyDeleteXKCD has a relevant comic.
ReplyDeletehttp://xkcd.com/862/
Face Palmer, the problem is that the web-surfers detract from the educational experiences of others. My compromise is to make them sit in the back row where nobody has to see their cute kitty videos or porn or whatever it is they are watching.
ReplyDeleteThis SelfControl app is probably the best thing I've been shown in a while. If I actually get a job in academia, I'll include it on any syllabus I write.
ReplyDeleteFace Palmer is right, we don't need to cut people off on campus. But we do need to to show them the tools to help themselves.
I fully support you if you want to outlaw computer or other devices in your classroom.
ReplyDeleteI've done things in my classroom that *required* internet access. (And not just my web programming class, but that one certainly needed it.) As such, I'm grateful that we do have wireless access in our classrooms.
The key is not to remove options; the key is to figure out how to get students to use them well.