Laptops in Classrooms: Helpful or Distracting?

CC-NC-SA photo by Kathy Cassidy

I came across a debate on Helium about the use of laptops in the classroom. When I was still in high school over 4 years ago, we had classroom sets of laptops that could be checked out from the library. We mainly used these for research projects or typing up papers for English. I found the laptops very useful because my home computer was slow and I enjoyed being able to work on my assignments during class. Although there were a few students who had trouble keeping on task, the majority of the class was busy at work using that time to their advantage. When I came across this debate, I found it very interesting to see what people had to say about the advantages and disadvantages.

65% of the voters said that laptops in the classroom were beneficial.

One post on the debate stated that she felt students potential to learn was taken away by the use of laptops in the classroom. She felt that the Internet is just too fun for students to handle all of that freedom on their own personal computer. Having that freedom causes too much distractions and they are taken to sites that leave the learning goal previously set. Although her argument focused on the Internet another post focused on the idea of being able to take notes in class. Now this was never an option when I was in high school, but in today's world it makes sense. Our brains are having to process to much these days with the fast pace of our world that it is very easy to get lost by other distractions when taking notes by pen and paper. If you have your laptop you are able to type quickly and jot down the notes while maintaining focus on the class material being taught. I find it much easy to take notes on a computer now and wish we could have had that option in class. If the Internet is such a distraction maybe the schools should disable those options and have certain laptops strictly for taking notes.

Among the many advantages of having laptops in the classroom, one post described the ability to have fast access and immediate feedback. Like many of the technologies and useful ways to integrate webpages in our own classrooms the idea of having that all in the click of a button is fascinating and efficient. I feel as though this course has already taught us about many of the advantages in having Internet access and the use of Internet sites in our classroom is very helpful.

How would you prevent distractions if you had laptops in your classrooms and would you find this useful?