Laptops and learning

I spend about 4-6 hours a day on my laptop and it feels like an extension of myself and my relationships; however, I've learned that such a shift in a major part of one's life requires developing new guidelines for social etiquette, so I often ask my students to sign the following laptop usage contract:  "I wish to have the privilege of using my laptop in this class as a note-taking device, and I commit that the only window open on my laptop during class time will be the one used for note-taking."

Why do I do this? Because I am convinced that electronic multi-tasking during class seriously hurts learning in the following ways:

1.  It allows an atmosphere of disrespect to enter the classroom.  A classroom is a communal conversation.  If you speak to me and while you speak to me I begin speaking to someone else as I listen, I am being disrespectful to you.  Engaging in electronic activities that are not relevant to the classroom conversation is an equivalent form of disrespect.  Furthermore, it is not simply personal disrespect; that disrespect is communicated to all those who can see the screen and who thus have their learning environment affected.

2.  It breeds more superficial, less substantive learning in the classroom.  There is a great myth prevalent in universities today that we have wondrous multi-tasking capabilities.  Stanford University published a major study this past summer that intended to uncover the advantages and disadvantages of electronic multi-tasking.  Much to the researchers' genuine surprise, they discovered that there were NO advantages and MANY disadvantages, with the primary disadvantage being that those who practiced extensive electronic multi-tasking lost the ability to practice priority-discernment.  Priority-discernment is a central skill embedded in university education.  When those who multi-task in class claim that it has no harmful effect upon them, they are simply proving the conclusion of the Stanford study concerning discernment (unless, of course, there is no substantive learning to be had in the classroom to begin with, but that's another issue).