Laptop use should be limited in classroom

Junette Reyes/Staff Writer

Students at the University have managed to integrate the use of their laptops into their classroom experience, for better and for worse.

While most laptop-using students appear to be diligent in the classroom while using them to take notes, others wander into the Internet to browse websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and so on.

It is the time and money of those students that is being wasted, but I still find this to be an unruly habit that should cease.

The misuse of laptops can prove to be risky for students since it presents yet one more distraction for them to overcome in focusing on their studies.

The only action I see fit to solve this problem would be to limit the use of laptops in the classroom. This could be by simply not using a laptop in the classroom unless it is necessary or by somehow integrating their use into the current lesson.

Of course, this would be to the chagrin of most laptop-using students who truly use them for taking notes, but it is not as though using laptops is their only way of doing so.

Before arriving at college, some students, like me, were exposed to the old-fashioned way of taking notes with a pen and paper without ever having to touch a laptop.

Some professors on campus do not even allow laptop use in their classrooms, and yet those students manage to take notes without them.

Those few students that use class time to check their email on their laptop prove that it is very easy for a laptop to become a distraction.

As students, we can barely afford to be distracted, especially, of all places, in the classroom.

As previously mentioned, it is the time and money of those students being wasted every time they surf the Internet on their laptops during a lecture, but limiting their use in the classroom presents the possibility that those students would take further advantage of their time in the classroom, having one less distraction stopping them from fully appreciating the lesson being taught.

Of course, limiting the use of laptops within the classroom would mean that most students would suffer for the acts of few, but it would also mean that students would be one step closer to achieving their goals of excelling.

It would drive most students into changing their note-taking routines, but if it means making students more attentive to their professors, then so be it.

junette.reyes@fiusm.com