Yesterday Michelle Boule posted Learning to Evolve, Evolving to Learn on her blog. I’ve been thinking about computers in the classroom a lot lately. As I’ve posted before, if folks are doing things on their laptop rather than paying attention in class, perhaps the course should be restructured. If you ban the computer, students will come up with other ways to distract themselves. To cut to the root of the issue, we should think about how to make the content relevant to the students’ lives and how to make the presentation of that information interesting. At work, my co-teacher and I are experimenting with our information literacy class. This semester we’re teaching the online portion nearly entirely on a blog. We still see students who IM or Facebook through class, but there are less. We also have more lab time, and during the lab part of class, everyone is engaged. Seriously, folks, there is a change in students you can see if you adapt in light of the technology they use. Banning it doesn’t help anyone. Adapting really does.