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Shirky almost completely ignores pedagogy in this article. While this paragraph addresses learning and course structure, he doesn’t address or attempt to justify the learning modes that banning laptops is meant to protect. The assumption of his argument is that the classroom is a place where mostly lectures (and some discussions) happen. I do not doubt that portable electronics provide unique challenges to lecturing; but is this narrow definition of the classroom — a place where an instructor delivers knowledge to students who must pay attention — one we should be defending from these increasingly ubiquitous technologies?

Yet, what goes unremarked on in the study is how abysmally all of the students did on the comprehension tests.

Students didn’t start being distracted in class with the introduction of laptops, so instructors are better off addressing the root problem: making their courses engaging and interesting.

why must we ask the 21st century to wait outside our classes? Is it just to protect the lecture? We know what a classroom designed around lectures, notes, and quizzes can do, and it is not impressive.

Perhaps by embracing the new forms and structures of communication enabled by laptops and other portable electronics we might discover new classroom practices that enable new and better learning outcomes.

what is the value of pedagogies like lecturing? What is the value of attention-structuring activities like note-taking?

I’m not for banning lectures, either. What I am for is pedagogies that are nimble and responsive to a range of needs and outcomes for both instructor and student. The lecture has its place. Asking students to close their laptops has its place. But, failing to explore new possibilities for education prompted by emerging technologies does not serve the interests of either group.

Most students and adults write far more in a given day than they did just 10 or 20 years ago, choosing to write to one another over social media or text message instead of talking on the phone or visiting.

Because they achieve automaticity quicker on the keyboard, today’s third graders may well become better writers as handwriting takes up less of their education. Keyboards are a boon to students with fine motor learning disabilities, as well as students with poor handwriting, who are graded lower than those who write neatly, regardless of the content of their expressions. This is known as the “handwriting effect,” proved by Steve Graham at Arizona State, who found that “when teachers are asked to rate multiple versions of the same paper differing only in legibility, neatly written versions of the paper are assigned higher marks for overall quality of writing than are versions with poorer penmanship.” Typing levels the playing field.

In fact, the changes imposed by the digital age may be good for writers and writing.

The more one writes, the better a writer one becomes

The kids will be all right.

There will be no loss to our children’s intelligence. The cultural values we project onto handwriting will alter as we do, as they have for the past 6,000 years.

The first involves adjusting the difficulty level of prefabricated skills-based exercises based on students’ test scores, and it requires the purchase of software. The second involves working with each student to create projects of intellectual discovery that reflect his or her unique needs and interests, and it requires the presence of a caring teacher who knows each child well

even if ed tech were adopted as thoughtfully as its proponents claim, we’re still left with deep reasons to be concerned about the outmoded model of teaching that it helps to preserve — or at least fails to help us move beyond

teachers are far more likely to use tech to make their own jobs easier and to supplement traditional instructional strategies than to put students in control of their own learning