Estonian Tech University Bans Notebooks and Smartphones 134
J-Georg writes "In Estonia's Tallinn University of Technology, all electronic devices — like notebooks, tablets and smartphones — are now banned in lectures held by the Institute of Public Administration. The restriction, which according to the institute aims to reduce factors interfering with academic work, came as a surprise to most of the university-goers. Moreover, it came just a day before the country's Ministry of Education announced a plan that by 2020 all textbooks and other literature would be turned into e-books and in eight years students are expected to start using computers and tablets to access study materials."
Understandable. (Score:5, Funny)
I'm in a lecture right now and haven't paid attention the entire time.
I think laptops etc. are a really bad idea in lectures. I should really stop bringing mine.
Re:Understandable. (Score:4, Funny)
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That's what exams are for.
Re:Understandable. (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't worry! There will be more than enough time for that after college. I think they call it an office job...
The problem is the lectures, not the laptops. (Score:5, Informative)
When I went to college I didn't have a cellphone or a laptop. I still spent plenty of time not paying attention to the lectures. For most people it is impossible to sit and listen and pay attention the whole time. The problem is the lectures, not the laptop.
Re:The problem is the lectures, not the laptops. (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, there's been dozens of people who've noticed that the university lecture is a really poor way of conveying information, which maybe suited a bunch of philosophy students gathering to hear Hegel hold forth at length, but not much else. But, nobody has come up with a way of doing it better that fits existing economic/institutional constraints. More interactive classes require higher teacher:student ratios and better teachers (uni professors' incentives don't favor good teaching, since they're judged approximately 5-15% on teaching, 85-95% on research), and are more difficult to plan. I still think Seymour Papert was at least partly on the right track.
Re:Hold Forth at Length (Score:2)
I think that Holding Forth at Length is terrible in some classes, especially Philosophy!
It works pretty well for many classes, like History or Humanities, or your choice of others, but Philosophy is really tough - every new page re-invents some phrase in a way never seen before! At least for me, I need fifteen minutes to get some of the really hard parts. If a professor blasts on, then the entire class becomes a futile mess.
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Re:philosophizing on your own (Score:2)
Well, yes. I am. Because the college class pace for that subject is easily twice as fast as I can really get around the ideas, so then rather than risk a "humanities" class trashing my grades I just ... didn't take it. I just bought the books on my own and I peruse them at my leisure.
show me a "better" alternative (Score:1)
I hear this from time to time, especially during classes in pedagogics for higher education, however every alternative that has been proposed is conveying knowledge better but takes more time or covers less topics.
I intentially seek lectures now (Score:2)
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Seems to me like the solution is very simple not just for lectures but for a lot of business presentations.
Just record it on video and share the link so the person can listen to it when it's convenient to them and when they are most receptive to the material. Comments/questions can be left in a social tool or simply by email. FAQ could be posted x days after the video is released.
I used to be part of a really big international company who would do live presentation at the main site and expect other sites to
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There are creative ways to be interesting and interactive with a large group. I've seen it done, it can be done.
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Very few classes are lectures and nothing but lectures. They have discussion groups and one on one face time with profs or TAs or lab time, etc.
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Yeah, there's been dozens of people who've noticed that the university lecture is a really poor way of conveying information
If only "dozens of people" have noticed "that the university lecture is a really poor way of conveying information", then I think it must be pretty good, given the millions of people who have undergone university education in the last few decades.
Perhaps you would like to increase your estimate of the number of disgruntled lecturees?
which maybe suited a bunch of philosophy students gathering to hear Hegel hold forth at length, but not much else.
Is he still lecturing? Man! That's what I call academic tenure!
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even if you're not paying full attention, you're still soaking up a lot that you don't even realize.
otoh, if your attention is divided, I'm 100% sure that so much is not even received by your ears/brain that you might as well just be on a beach.
the internet addiction is this generation's major problem. maybe you refuse to care or see it, but it WILL mess with you later on. you are being made into a perfect little consumer. hope you enjoy having that done to you...
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Yes, now that our information is no longer given to us exclusively by a small number of powerful news organizations, things are going to get a lot worse.
I have a bridge you might be interested in.
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Taking notes will do wonders for an attention problem. Problem remains with the student.
Yes, surely our misery is of our own making. (Score:2)
This is known as the just world hypothesis [wikipedia.org].
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The problem is the lectures, not the laptop.
There's an app for that.
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> I should really stop bringing mine.
Good idea. That will help you catch up on your sleep.
Re:Understandable. (Score:4, Interesting)
I went to college in the mid 80's. there were microcassette recorders and that's about it for 'electronic gizmos' you'd take to class.
just now I was reading fark and saw a posting from someone who is IN CLASS right now and posting/laughing. while in class.
I know you young hipsters think its right and proper, but I do fear for the educational quality (and attentiveness/concentration!) of this current and all following generations. I'd be willing to bet that you are getting half or less of the education you are (over)paying for.
if you are going to chat online, why the hell waste money on school, then? just sit in a coffee house and be done with it.
I do think its rude to hear clicking or typing and *especially* laughing while the prof is talking.
hell, I get annoyed when I'm talking to a college-aged friend of mine and he starts tapping on his while while *I'm* talking TO HIM.
rude rude rude.
"gimme my stimulus and fuck everyone else!"
I do cry for this generation. they have no idea at all what they are doing. none.
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Pay attention to the professor? (Score:2, Insightful)
Doesn't seem that out of line and there's many US schools with the same rule... they don't ban computers everywhere, but when you're in the classroom the only computer should be used by to the professor,
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If you can download and watch the materials on your laptop it's far less distracting than if you have to take notes and simultanously listen to the professor.
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So, how exactly are teachers presenting information to classes at the junior high school level and above these days? I remember teachers talking while I wrote down key points and summaries of wh
Re:Pay attention to the professor? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Pay attention to the professor? (Score:5, Insightful)
When I was in first year U I had a calculus prof whose lectures were painfully boring. He'd put a slide on the overhead projector, talk about it while we'd copy it down into our notes. Then he'd put up another slide, repeat, repeat. No time for interaction with the students. Just switch slides, copy, switch slides copy, for 50 excruciating minutes.
One day, the bulb in the project blew. We were all hoping that the prof would cancel the class, but no. He just pushed the overhead to one side, picked up a piece of chalk and started to lecture while writing on the blackboard. The prof transformed from painfully boring into a first rate lecturer. The class was engaging, there was interaction with the students, back and forth discussions. For that one class, the prof was one of the best lecturers I've ever seen.
Next class the overhead was fixed, so it was back to painfully boring.
Re:Pay attention to the professor? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm an engineering student and I have noticed that most of the time, the general theorem that applies is that the interestingness of lecture is inversely proportional to the technologic level used.
In other words, someone in the theatre who'll use blackboard/scribbled projection tend to be almost universally amazing, those that use common "fill in gaps" projections tend to be OK , and lecturers using powerpoint tend to be the "gouge out eyes" sort of boring.
Re:Pay attention to the professor? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Written on transparencies have both kinds - folks that just boringly plow through , and folks like our current Fracture Mechanics, and Electric Drive Systems professors who'll actually derive stuf
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Hahaha, Amen. Sorry, no mod points.
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My grade school had a smart board [wikipedia.org]. It's one of those rare situations where the technology is genuinely useful. You can interact with images, video, etc. very easily - it turns a "dumb" whiteboard or flat surface into a "smart" surface. Great for writing notes and the like on materials that the students need to see.
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Entirely this.
I'm an engineering student and I have noticed that most of the time, the general theorem that applies is that the interestingness of lecture is inversely proportional to the technologic level used.
In other words, someone in the theatre who'll use blackboard/scribbled projection tend to be almost universally amazing, those that use common "fill in gaps" projections tend to be OK , and lecturers using powerpoint tend to be the "gouge out eyes" sort of boring.
I'm an (Australian) engineering student, and almost all of my lecturers will use Powerpoint slides and end up writing all over them, to the extent that they often added mostly blank slides or wide margins purely for that purpose. The Powerpoints are published on the university website beforehand, and recorded copies of the lectures are usually made available afterwards.
The only subjects I've ever had trouble with have been ones where the lecturers avoided Powerpoint and just scribbled on the projector. Thei
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Did you consider mentioning this to the professor?
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Did you thank him for the lecture, and urge him to continue in this fashion?
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For that one class, the prof was one of the best lecturers I've ever seen. Next class the overhead was fixed, so it was back to painfully boring.
Did you ever mention this to him?
I teach at university. If any one of my students were to tell me that in the moment of the crash, I became one of the best lecturers (s)he had ever seen, and afterwards it was sleepy time again,...
You can be sure the uni equipment wouldn't be turned on till I heard otherwise.
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I once had a professor who did that (honestly I think everyone has), but, just to make it more frustrating, he'd switch out the slide when you were about three-quarters done copying it down. On top of that he'd refuse to give out a copy of his po
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I'm a college freshman so I remember high school very well. Teachers put a slide up with all the info on it and waited for students to copy everything down before advancing. They trained students to copy everything they see instead of evaluating what needs to be copied.
There is this service called, ``lecture notes'' that my university sold on a per course basis freeing one up from wasting a single moment writing notes so you could listen to the professor. Extend this today to digital retrieval of notes in PDF format available by the Professor at his web site and guess what? They still produce similar, if not idential distribution curves when they took notes by hand versus not taking notes at all with their test scores. The biggest change needs to not be in how students in
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I remember that problem from the student's point of view. The professors were quite good at writing on the board while explaining at the same time. But I was not good enough at multitasking to process the information and also write down the important points at the same time.
Eventually, I gave up on taking notes and concentrated on understanding as much as possible during the lecture. For preparing for the tests, this left two options:
1) Learn from lecture notes someone else had prepared. Fortunately, many p
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It depends on the professors. The nicer ones create a digital book/note of the lecture together for a class. The reasonable ones announce "note writing competitions" and publish the winner on their site. If none of that happens there are still notes available from older students but those usually can't be relied upon. Having the official notes on a laptop helps understanding the lecture without the need to stop paying attention from time to time when you are writing. It also comes handy when you missed some
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You need a good prof then. Some schools will give you copies of the lectures as well so you don't have to write it down. Don't call lectures broken just because some profs can't teach well. The idea that many have had elsewhere of just videotaping lectures for everyone to watch is just stupid, a lecture should never be about passive viewing; always ask questions of the prof, the prof should pay attention to what's being asked and adjust accordingly. A lecture should be interactive.
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Some professors in 1999-2002 handed out their presentation on paper in the "Notes" view on PowerPoint. No need to copy what was seen, just copy what was said that was noteworthy.
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When I was in college (2 years ago) I brought my laptop to most classes, simply because I can type about 4-5x faster than I can hand-write. The only thing running was emacs, but none of my professors minded.
The thing that makes this work for college is that I *want* to be there. If I really don't want to take a class, I just don't register for it. So if I'm sitting in a classroom, it's because I'm actually interested in what the professor has to say. Such a thing would never work in a setting like high
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[...] but when you're in the classroom the only computer should be used by to the professor.
This is a hasty generalization, as there are a handful of times when having a computer in a class can be immensely useful. From my own experience, typing up the lectures, in LaTeX, on my laptop was much, much faster than using pen and paper and allowed me to transcribe far more information than others in my grad. math classes.
Laptops are not the problem (Score:2)
Notebook??? (Score:5, Interesting)
If students didn't have them or smart phones, they'd be doodling, spacing out, sleeping in class as well. It is just a diversion.
Dude it has been shown that doodling enhances absorption and recall on information, but distracted multi tasking decreases it.
Also since when do we say notebook in a headline and have everyone read it and think laptop not paper notebook.
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When I've asked the leaders of the meeting if it's alright in advance, they've occasionally said something like "Yes, but don't be checking facebook." Then in the meeting, other people fall asleep. Somehow THAT'S okay, but me checking facebook and remaining conscious would not.
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Also since when do we say notebook in a headline and have everyone read it and think laptop not paper notebook.
The '[...] and Smartphones' wasn't a clue?
Re:Laptops are not the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
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But sitting behind a student doodling is not as near distracting as sitting behind a student playing WoW or watching porn (I've seen both).
I haven't done either of those, but while in a class, I did boot up my macbook pro, which made the wonderful apple startup noise, and disrupted the whole class... everyone stared at me, and I was all, "oops!"
Re:Laptops are not the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
A diversion that everyone behind you is forced to watch as well, which can be utterly infuriating.
People checking up on news, entertainement or playing games during class are projecting a wide cone of distraction behind them. It is also impossible for others to ignore it due to how the human brain reacts to peripheral movement and bright light sources.
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However, I don't think removing electronics from the classroom entirely is a fair solution. I would propose that anyone who wishes to use electronics be seated at the back of the classroom/lecture hall unless they need to sit closer for a legitimate reason (medical issue, etc).
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True, but if you are genuinely interested in the class you can manage to arrive in time and get in the front row.
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I'm TAing for a large freshman class right now. The number of students who think it's appropriate to carry on extended conversations during lecture, at almost normal volume, is absurd.
Kick them out. Make sure the lecture material is online so they can learn it on their own time, and not waste yours and their classmates.
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Banning paper next (Score:1)
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Really they should just go straight to the source of the problem and ban brains in lecture halls -- keep the distractions completely out of it.
Profs need to stop being assholes and start realizing that the lecture isn't for their ego it's for the students (eh, well.. that's how it *should* be)
Elbonian? (Score:1)
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Closer to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_Slobbovia [wikipedia.org].
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Many publishers will release a new edition every year to prevent you from selling it used (and and significant cost) anyway.
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A nook is $79. My absurdly useful Acer A500 tablet was only $350.
What? (Score:1)
Must everything in education be an overreaction? (Score:5, Insightful)
I always find the "zero tolerance" thing (which seems most prevalent in education) to be annoying. Contrary to the image most people have of every college student texting away on their phones all through class, I took a few classes not long ago and found that the vast majority of students were actually pretty attentive and polite in class. You would have one or two who you would see occasionally texting or playing on their laptops, but they were definitely the exception. Now, the reasonable, sane way to deal with this would be for the professor to pause briefly and say to the idiot texting "Hey dipshit, stop texting in my class, or you're going to be texting 'I failed this class' to your parents very soon." Takes about 3 seconds, everyone gets the message, idiot is suitably embarrassed.
But, of course, in typical "zero tolerance" fashion, rather than manning up and targeting the few abusers with a quick kick in the head, they throw out a blanket proclamation that punishes EVERYONE by threatening them for even having a cellphone or laptop in their bookbag or pocket. So now everyone has to suffer because the faculty and administration are a bunch of pussies who can't wipe their asses if there isn't a regulation somewhere authorizing them to do so.
It's shit like this that leads to teachers calling in the 5-0 [go.com] to slap the cuffs on a 5-year-old.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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PS: to force a paragraph/new line you need to type "less than sign p greater than sign" using symbols which this site won't let me write down without forcing a paragraph!
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I always find the "zero tolerance" thing (which seems most prevalent in education) to be annoying.
Im afraid that there's a lot of sampling bias going here. The only time a decision (whether in education or anything else) shows up in a discussion in major media (or slashdot) is when it is perceived as extreme. So while this may look like an extreme reaction of the sort we're "always" seeing, the fact is that there are hundreds and thousands of other potential stories that we're not seeing, precisely because they are more moderate.
Discussions of this type - exploring the extremes - are very useful for tea
Estonians are smart (Score:1)
Distraction, not fear, is the mind killer. And remember, these are the guys behind Skype.
Disclaimer: My Mom is from Tallinn.
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Ah, is this going to turn into Estonia vs. the Nordics flamewar? The timing is great: this [satwcomic.com] ;) Estonia is a recurring character [satwcomic.com] there.
Good call! But exceptions? (Score:3, Insightful)
In general I think most people who bring a laptop to a lecture will be distracted by it, in particular if there is WiFi available. Unfortunately in the world of instant Facebook updates and e-mail alerts, it is very hard to remain focused even with the best intentions and frankly most students don't have the best intentions.
Bad professors are usually the problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe if the instructors engaged and involved the class instead of yammering at them for hours on end, students wouldn't need to look elsewhere for engaging material.
Sincerely,
College professor
Understandable indeed (Score:2)
On the other hand, it feels good to be the recitation TA at times like this.
More on the subject, I only use my laptop during lectures as an e-book reader, and sometimes for note-taking (live-TeXing is quite hard); and I have only seen other students use it in the same manner. But then again, that's grad school; no electronics might be an effective measure in some intro undergrad courses.
Institute of DisTechnology? (Score:2)
Honesty, I might expect this policy from a liberal arts college, but not an Institute of Technology. If the student doesn't want to pay attention, they can fail the class. Learning is the responsibility of the student not the teacher. (I've been through many of classes through my
Probably a good idea (Score:3)
What about banning lectures where it's just text b (Score:5, Insightful)
What about banning lectures where it's just reading from the text book and maybe a set power point slides.
I use my tablet in meetings (Score:3)
Should be professor's choice (Score:3)
I'd say that almost every class I've had after returning to school, most people I see are just screwing around on their laptops and maybe looking at lecture notes part of the time. Only in one class is the professor using our laptops as a teaching aid; having us set up our website. This naturally evolved during the semester and wasn't a forethought.
Don't let a few bad students ruin it for everybody (Score:1)
I use my laptop in almost every class I have. The only exceptions so far being Foreign Language, Math, and the one required art class I had to take..
I generally have the wireless turned off on it, and the only things I have running are my note taking program, and any
pdfs or powerpoint slides for that class.
In two and a half years, I have only been in three classes where the Professor did not allow people to use laptops in their class.
Once I found that out, I went and dropped the class, and twice was able to
To be expected (Score:2)
Left and Right Hands need introducing.... (Score:1)
Left hand meet the right hand...Right hand meet the the left hand.
idiotic tags (Score:2)
"elbonia". Estonia is one of the most technologically advanced countries in Europe as far as communications are concerned.
>Moreover, it came just a day before the
So? Read your books at home (on stone tablets, if you want), listen to lectures in the auditorium.
1 class a semester (Score:1)
I'm a junior attending a pretty decent private school right now for Computer Science. Excluding my CS classes, every professor has banned any electronics equipment (i.e. laptops, cell phones) use during the class period, and I completely agree with them.
Even when you use a laptop correctly for taking notes, your clicking is disruptive to other students. Beyond that, the vast majority of students just screw around on facebook or other sites. Some are exceptions to the norms, but I would easily wager that
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Re:hahaha (Score:4, Insightful)
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Not sure what school you go to but every class Ive taken we have been free to rent or buy the older editions for much cheaper. Obviously, its "at your own risk", but when youre renting for $20 for a semester its hardly a big risk.
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You know... I expected comments on an education-related article to be more literate, but hey... maybe it's just me.
* OP had "Capitalism at it's finest".
** Its child has "sentance", "the older on".
*** Its child also has "class Ive taken", "its at your own risk", "youre" and another occurrence of "its hardly".
If this isn't the Trifecta of Fail, I don't know what is.
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I also missed a comma in the first section of my first sentence, and this post is missing a period at the end