Banning Laptops in College Classrooms

I don’t want to sound like a luddite, but as both a teacher and a student, I think this is a good idea.  It’s just too easy to get distracted in class with a computer on your desk.  I generally take notes on paper then transcribe them to my computer, giving myself some extra time to go over them in the process.  Apparently a lot of colleges and universities feel the same as me and are starting to clamp down on computers in the classroom.  Here’s an interesting overview from Slate’s Big Money blog and a quote from said article.

Two years ago, Carrie B. Fried, a psychology professor at Winona State University in Minnesota studied the effect of laptops on learning. She discovered that computers were a significant distraction in class, and that using laptops negatively affected students. The students admitted that they learned less and performed poorly in comparison with those who didn’t use them during class.