Lap of luxury?

Some University of Memphis law students are mad as hell, and they're not going to take this injustice sitting down. \nBut if they do take it sitting down, you better believe they're going to have their laptop computers open and ready to furiously instant message each other.\nJune Entman, a professor of law at Memphis, sent an e-mail to her first-year law students March 6 telling them to bring pens and paper to take notes. By attempting to regulate the way her classroom is run (imagine the nerve!), she simultaneously joined the ranks of many professors nationwide who are hitting control-alt-delete on student laptops, which they consider distracting in their classes. \n"My main concern was (the students) were focusing on trying to transcribe every word that was I saying, rather than thinking and analyzing," Entman very reasonably told the Associated Press Monday.\nIn response to Entman's let-them-eat-cake decision, Memphis law students are storming the Bastille and circulating a petition against her. (They tried to file a complaint with the American Bar Association, based on a provision the ABA has regarding technology at law schools, but the complaint was dismissed. Hard to believe the ABA had other things to worry about.)\n"If we continue without laptops, I'm out of here. I'm gone. I won't be able to keep up," said student Cory Winsett, who told the AP his hand-written notes are incomplete and less organized.\nSounds like the kind of lawyer we'd like defending us. Better file a motion to have the judge declare a mistrial because you can't keep up.\nIn all seriousness, the Memphis School of Law dean says the choice is the professor's, and he's right. Students can "viva la Reforme!" all they want, but it will most likely fizzle.\nThe conflict between classroom appropriateness and state-of-the-art technology has been ongoing since students could bring new doodads to lecture halls. Now in the technological boom of the 21st century, that tension shows no sign of slowing down. \nThe line of demarcation gets blurrier when it comes to using technology that can enhance education and/or provide 90 tempting minutes of rude e-mail checking, Facebook scanning, instant message sending, sports score reading, class distraction merriment.\nLaptops can be convenient in class, providing students the answers to questions at the click of a button. Also, many can type faster on a computer than they can take down notes. \nBut Entman has a point. She's training future lawyers, not court stenographers, and there is an analytical element that goes missing when students bury their faces behind their computer screens. Ever since the advent of law schools, students have done well. Only in the last decade or so, with the rise in popularity of the laptop computer, has such a device seemed so utterly necessary to accomplish anything in class. Memphis, you can get by without them.