What to do about laptops in lectures: Worse for the bystanders

Fascinating result: The bystanders have their learning impacted more than the ones who opened up the laptop.

There is a fundamental tension here, and I don’t know how to resolve it. On the one hand, I like it when students have their laptops in class. Many of them are more comfortable taking notes this way than longhand. In the middle of a lecture I might ask someone to look something up that I don’t know off the top of my head.

On the other hand, the potential for distraction is terrible. I’ve walked in the back of the classroom of many of my colleagues and seen that perhaps 50% of the students are on the Web.

via What to do about laptops in lectures? – Daniel Willingham.