Laptops: Engagement Machines/Call and Response Machines

I would like to propose two ways to look at laptops: as an engagement machine and a 'call and response' machine.

An engagement machine is a device that attracts and holds your attention, often making you loose track of time as you become involved in paying attention to details and themes. One of the most common such machines is a book. The phrase 'lost in a good book' indicates the nature of the experience a person can have reading. Laptops cause that same phenomenon, even more easily than a book. I would suggest that, put in front of an open laptop, many if not most or even all people will begin to 'fiddle' with it. Soon they are 'lost' in it. I recently watched my brother, who is not a scientist, open a National Geographic site on their Genome project. Within minutes he was surfing through the site, just looking at visuals and spot reading. Then he asked himself a question about the process of determining how the Y gene functions in males' genetic history. Soon he was involved in page after page as he reformulated the question based on information he received from visuals and text. He didn't quit for nearly 30 minutes while he pressed for an answer to his question.

While one anecdote hardly stands for the entire population, I would submit that the experience described above is common. Think of the time comparative shopping for airline tickets, reading reviews of cameras to determine which one to purchase and from whom, looking up medical issues such as pink eye or cancer. During those moments the machine takes us over and engages us with the content it reveals to us, or allows us to construct.

This key feature is important for teachers who have laptops in the classroom. The machine will cause engagement. People will find pathways in it which they will explore, whether those pathways be iming, email, shopping, solitaire, gaming, or search for answers or data upon which to construct knowledge. The goal then is to manage the machine. If we manage the machine, we manage the engagement. Part of teaching with laptops it seems to me is to facilitate the student machine interface so that we channel the freeflowing engagement that the machine not only allows but encourages. The strategies of that facilitation are key topics that we need to put into our shared discourse as quickly as possible.

The laptop is also a call and response machine. 'Call and response,' of course, is a term derived from activities in spiritual music, a strategy stemming from our African-American heritage. However, it is easy to see a class as a call and response locale. For 56 years in education this strategy has been a constant in my life. The teacher 'calls' a question and the students respond with the answers. The goal in the class, as in the church, is to engage the congregation such that caller and responders join in a celebration of awareness. But in classes all too often the response is limited to a few people. For instance in an article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune (November 28, 2005, A1, A6) Assistant Professor Scott McLeod says, ""The dilemma [in a regular class] is that you throw out a question and you hear from two or three students.'" In other words he uses the call strategy but like many teachers has less than satisfactory response.

The laptop, and other technologies, can facilitate call and response. The Star Tribune article ("At U, raising your hand in class goes high tech") discusses the use of 'clickers' in lecture classes. These clickers are hand-held devices that students use to respond to questions. The professor poses the question and students respond by clicking. The professor's computer is hooked to a system that records all the answers. Within seconds the professor can determine whether students are understanding the material. The benefits of this approach are apparent to Associate Professor Donald Liu who says, "' By using the system to quiz them, focus them and get them to engage in cooperative learning, I am able to bring them back.'"

In other words Liu uses technology to facilitate call and response: "'Now you can pose a questions and see what everyone thinks. They all participate.'" The University of Minnesota, however, says that they will eventually replace the clickers with laptops because laptops in a wireless environment can communicate more readily than clickers.

This call and response strategy is one method of managing the engagement capability of the laptop in class and is also an example of technology not only facilitating but enhancing a traditional, deeply held educational value.