Banning WIFI in university classrooms?

An interesting article on efforts to restrict students’ surfing during class sees it from both sides. Ken Fisher makes the pertinent point, though, that it’s more or less useless to try, since eventually students will be accessing the web through wireless providers other than the university.

How to deal with surfing students? He offers this advice and observation:

What can you do in the face of blocking efforts that ultimately will fail? Really, professors shouldn’t be doing anything new. A well-structured class should have a lecture component that delivers material and analysis necessary for the student’s performance in the course. The bigger question is, if Joe Baccalaureate got through Econ 101 with an « A » while spending his time manicuring his rotisserie-style fantasy baseball team in lecture, what was the lecture for to begin with?

via Digg