"Distractions in the wireless classroom" reminds me of what happened among us PGDELTs during the first semester, when lecturers complained about, or even, got irritated by, students surfing on the Internet or chatting online with their faraway friends. Also as university teachers, these PGDELT scholars know about etiquette: they know clearly how much offense they would feel if their students back in China are doing their own stuff instead of listening attentively to the their lecture. However, the Internet is so colorful and attractive that these scholars simply can't help. Such a group of students are not able to exert sufficient self-control over themselves, let alone those young undergraduates.
Both luckily and unluckily, such things are not likely to happen in my current teaching institution since laptops are not widely available among students or wireless Internet is inaccessible on campus. But distractions in the classroom do exist: teachers often complain about students' sending SMS or having cellphones ringing in class, which is very distracting, especially in classes conducted in the language lab, where the teaching equipment reacts to the incoming calls by buzzing even before the phone rings. The whole class is ruined and students really get annoyed.
Solutions:
1. Whenever a phone rings in class or the teacher notices students sending SMS, the teacher stops lecturing. Everything stops so that the involved student may feel very guilty or embarrassed. In the end, nobody would do the same thing.
2. The teacher should serve as a model, never receiving or making any call in class except in emergency.
3. For those wireless classrooms, the teacher should set some rules and regulations beforehand to prevent in-class surfing or chatting or even playing of online games. If the class performance accounts for a certain percentage in the final grade, the students may be seen more attentive in class. Meanwhile, the teacher should also try to improve his or her own teaching methodology so as to engage the students better.
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3 comments:
i can't agree with you more when you talk about how we as teachers failed to exercise self-control in PGDELT class rooms let alone young learners who have grown up in an environment where SMS and web surfing and net games are the order of the day. i remember an artical i read for Phyllis Chew's class on the blurring boundaries between the public and private happening on young children living in a digital media world. i agree with you that these learners should be taught explicitly the ground rules of politeness in techno use. however, i am quite skeptical about its effectiveness because what teachers are trying to do is not simply to change young learners' behavior but to change their mindset and cultural habitus.
I like the proposed solutions a lot. Rules are good to use to constrain the disobedient and rebellious side of human nature. However, I believe students should have the free will to decide their own course of action. With rules, the normal classroom might be reclaimed. But, how about outside the classroom? Can we as teachers still exert our power on them? Thus, we may need to change students’ mentality by planting in them the seeds of healthy use of technology in their life, and then let them deside...
Your measures may be effective, but basically I think teachers should not merely punish the students. apart from that, they should try to enhance students’ overall quality, and cultivate them to abide by the basic etiquette.
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