Maybe I'm old school....

....but I consider the iPads and the Laptops should be drastically forbidden from classrooms!! To class you come to pay attention, participate, debate, agree, disagree, you come to discuss a topic. I completely understand that keeping the attention on boring topics and teachers is tough, and that distraction appears. I have no problem with that, it happens and it's part of the challenge of a teacher, and I also get distracted easily and even many times I fall asleep in class. But the annoying thing is when that childish attitude is ALL THE TIME!!!

There is nothing more disappointing than paying 14 thousands Euro (Yes! fourteen thousands Euros) to take a MSc, and pay at least 1000 Euro per month to survive in this city, to be 70% of the class playing with the dam iPad, Skyping, chating or Facebooking!!!!

I started to get over-annoyed by the situation, and then I got worried about it, so I have thought about it and I've taken different lines:

1) Maybe I don't understand their behavior because I come from an engineering school, where you can't simply be distracted. Where to pass a course you can not bullshit in the final exam, where you a) have to pay attention in class, b) understand and learn what the hell did the teacher said, c) practice a lot to prove that you really learned and d) get to the exam well prepared to make the dam numbers, equations and models fit to get a result. In simple words: engineering is serious stuff. I've got the feeling that this people in my course who also payed 14400 euros and came to France to play in class have never experience what is studying in reality!!!

2) That approach might not be the best because it divides between engineers and others, which I try not to do, and indeed the best student in my course is not engineer and she also uses her laptop (not to play, though), so then I just try to not to pay attention to them. It is their business and their decision to waste their money, their time and their opportunity. But then I remember that my expectations of a MSc, were also in the quality of the classmates, which are another interesting source of learning, so then I think that with their childish attitude their are also making me loose my money because they don't participate at all, they don't bring any value to the course. Even worst, they will get the same degree that I will, reducing the value of mine as well.

3) Thinking all these just makes me feel bad, their are too extreme. I should just take it easy, chill out.

4) But seeing them wasting their money and my money just makes me feel like slapping them in the face and yelling them to get the hell out of class!

5) but again, thinking that just makes me feel bad.

Then I just think that I am too old-school for this generation of over-technified students.

Note: I am not condemning those who use a laptop or iPad in class. Just those who don't stop using it between class and class, which sadly in my course are more than one.