I was quite amazed when I equipped my daughter with an IBM notebook before she went to Dal only to find that none of the students at Dal actually took notes electronically in class. These were in humanities and international studies classes, yet even in her Kings Journalism classes, the students took notes just as traditionally as they ever did.
Now one of those yes-you-did, no-we-didn’t stories out of the Harvard Law School [1] where a group of law professors got close to saying that notebook computers weren’t welcome in their classrooms and the students had better stock up on yellow legal pads [2].
Which leads to the question whether the students are paying more attention with a yellow pad, or whether the distractions of instant-messaging, web-surfing and email make the instructor’s voice simply another channel on the dial of student attention.
Yes I know that some of the law schools are very proud of what they’ve done installing wireless networks within the faculties. But are Canadian law students actually using notebooks in class? Is there a Harvard backlash here?