I find it fascinating – the differences between use of technological in faculties, although this is based only on my experience between Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, and the Faculty of Law at UTS. In Humanities, the number of people with laptops is about 1:25 in a tutorial class, whereas in law, it is about 1:2, if not more. The fact that more people use laptops in law means that the way they perceive their work is different. That is, the way they relate work to technology is different to a person who hand writes notes.

I used to be one of those people, and one of the biggest difference is the time spent typing notes after the lecture, and consolidating it into one word document. For people using laptops, everything is already there, and consolidating notes can be done in minutes, which is why I became a laptop user… convenience. A laptop is a notebook… literally like the notebook you take when you handwrite notes – at least, that is how I relate to my notebook. It’s very personal too.

I’ve noticed, through recent group work, that there is a technological divide in that, when you are in a room, where the ratio of laptop use is 1:25, people look to you to note-take, regardless of whether you perceive it as being for the greater good of the group, or for your personal use.

However, where the ratio of laptop use is greater, there is much more respect in that people tend not to look at your screen when taking notes, especially when you are multi-tasking… surfing the web, playing solitaire, checking email etc.

That is a skill, and I think every student who uses a laptop for classes on a day-to-day basis develops high multi-tasking skill. However, there is the dilemma in circumstances where there is less understanding of privacy in environments of lower technological use.