The question of banning laptops in class: it’s academic, silly

In the early nineties, laptop in tow, I was almost always co-computing with at least two or three other people in every class. The real ubiquity of laptops in the classroom didn't come until much later for me, when I was no longer taking classes but teaching them. In my own experience, it wasn't the convenience of a laptop or its impressive capabilities that was driving student usage.

It was WiFi.

Today that is still the case. As a lecturer peers out at her students, of those with a laptop one can be sure that at least a third of them are gripped by and totally fixated on the new information they're taking in... at The Drudge Report.

Professors, academic deans, and even university IT staff are now finding themselves in a 'Net neutrality battle of their own, but this one might be better characterized as Pedagogy vs. Teh Intarweb. The same schools that rushed to bring "WiFi to Campus" are now turning it off, creating new policies, or rethinking their implementations. In rare instances, professors are banning laptops from the classroom altogether. Others have taken the approach of asking students to close laptops for periods of time, while others are looking for ways to remind students that participation in class is required—big screen in front of your face or not.

Another approach, as reported by the Chronicle of Higher Education, is being tested at Bentley College. There professors have been given the keys to the Internet kingdom, and with a flip of a switch can knock out WiFi in their classrooms.

"Called the 'classroom network control system,' it allows professors in many classrooms to choose one of five settings: turn off Internet access but allow e-mail access, turn off e-mail access but allow Internet access, disable Internet and e-mail access but allow computers to reach campus Web pages, shut off all access, or allow all access. A computer at the front of the classroom lets the professor change the settings at any time."

The system at Bentley is actually several years old, although it was only recently modified to allow professors to shut off WiFi in addition to wired Ethernet. Reportedly, they are able to turn off WiFi rather effectively, without significant problems stemming from active WiFi signals at nearby locations. Phillip G. Knutel, director of academic technology at Bentley, says that professors have really taken to the system. They shouldn't get too comfortable, however.

An important endnote

The Chronicle article misses one very important detail in this: the foolhardiness of controlling access to the Internet. The days of controlling Internet access via your college's or university's WiFi infrastructure are coming to an end shortly after they started. Telecommunications companies such as Verizon already offer high-speed wireless EVDO to laptop users in major metropolitan cities, and short of violating federal law, schools cannot block those signals. In just a few short years, most laptops will likely come with support for commercial networks much in the way that they now come with support for WiFi. Laptops already ship with EVDO support, and WiMax support is around the corner. As prices drop (and they will), students will be as connected to the Internet as they are to their friends via mobile phones.