Back in the Dark Ages, say 1960, there were no mobile phones and no laptops or pads. There were spiral bound notebooks, pens and pencils. That's it. In fact I still have notebooks from classes in college and grad school. Why? I took great notes and annotated them neatly. I used sized spiral bound note books with a Parker 51 pen and black ink. My writing was clear block letters, organized neatly by topic. Also I dated each lecture. I then annotated them for exams.
Finally schools are ridding the interference of electronic devices. As the Harvard Crimson notes: As middle and high school students descended upon Cambridge for their first day of classes on Tuesday, one thing was missing from their pockets: cell phones. Beginning this fall, cell phone use during instructional time will not be permitted for all students grades six through twelve, Cambridge interim Superintendent David Murphy said in an interview Tuesday. “We just want to make sure that our learning environments are as free of distractions as possible so that the focus can be on the teaching and learning,” Murphy said. According to Cambridge Public Schools spokesperson Sujata Wycoff, though how phones are confiscated may vary across schools, expectations remain the same: cell phones will be collected at the beginning of each period and returned at the end, but students can use their phone during lunch time, in between classes, and before or after school.
Phones and pads detract and do not add. Paper has been useful for centuries and before that even wax tablets. Phones are distractions. I see many walkers in the AM while biking on their phones texting or whatever as they purportedly are getting exercise. Who can really waste so much time.
Congrats to Cambridge.
Posts
