Why a Leading Professor of Media Studies Banned Electronic Devices from his Classroom

While tech entrepreneurs are rubbing their hands together gleefully about the dawn of the new age of technology in the classroom, Clay Shirkey of New York University has resolved to ban all electronic devices from his classes about the new media. Why? Students could not pay attention or learn what he was teaching because they were so distracted by the messages on their cellphones, laptops, tablets, etc.

Clay Shirkey is not just any technology professor. He is one of the leaders in the study of new techologies and social media.

He writes:

“This is all just the research on multi-tasking as a stable mental phenomenon. Laptops, tablets and phones — the devices on which the struggle between focus and distraction is played out daily — are making the problem progressively worse. Any designer of software as a service has an incentive to be as ingratiating as they can be, in…