That makes no sense. It's almost as if you did not read the article. [i did not either =p, but it still makes no sense.]

The laptop has much more of a chance of being distracting. Pen and paper can and does, such as old school IM (passing notes), but its about killing the slippery slope.

I personally support all bans on all (personal)technology in a classroom setting. This includes phones, laptops etc.

What happend to the Socratic method of teaching/learning? =(

Reminds me of an article in Byte magazine back in the 80s or early 90s. A student at Georgia Tech wrote his dissertation on a program he developed for a personal digital assistant program, hosted on a wearable computer. Partway through his dissertation defence, the examiners realized that he was using his dissertation to defend itself. Would you have voted his thesis up or down?

I would have voted him up if he was doing AI - the most impressive way to get a phd in AI would be to have your creation defend your thesis for you.

agreed, obviously if you are studying technology and specifically technological assistence interfaces/tools then those specific instances have a place in the classroom. I would think firearms are banned in classrooms right? What about at police academies or your local "weapons manufacturing trade school". See what I'm getting at?

I just see overwhelmingly more times than not students using aim/facebook/meebo/yahoo games/ during class. I'm sure there IS an argument to be made for people that actually use their laptops to "optimize" learning, but they are few and far between imo.