I like Ciaran’s idea of an instantaneous class wiki – I’ve been trying to work out how to integrate wikis into class, and the best I’ve come up with so far is to set the equivalent of an essay topic and require the class to collaborate on a wiki to generate the answer. But an instantaneous wiki of a given lecture/seminar is a much better idea, so I might very well try to do something with it, as soon as the laptop population in any given class gets high enough.

As for Cian’s argument that multi-taksing is possible, I entirely agree (though I’m not very good at it myself). But the problem (if it is a problem) arises where the surfer is not multitasking and/or is distracting surrounding students.

Eoin.

Eoin O’Dell writes about laptop usage in lectures and how usage in his classes isn’t quite as high the US yet, but it’s growing every year. The screens that I’ve seen sitting behind people using laptops in DCU would confirm the tha…