FNP/RNfaculty

I teach in a state university BSN program and am in a PhD program as a student. I use my laptop in class as a student when we are viewing PowerPoint presentations because I like to add notes directly to the PowerPoint file. When we are having a class discussion, I don't usually have the laptop open. I think viewing internet sites other than to look up references that come up in the discussion is distracting to both myself and my neighbors in class and could be irritating to the professor. As an instructor, I don't keep track of what my students are doing online, but there is a lot of content in the lecture that either is not in the book specifically or possibly not emphasized in the book. I think that visiting other sites during class is somewhat a waste of your class time and could be annoying to your neighbors. Also some of my fellow faculty members ban laptops because of the number of students who are spending the time on facebook and IM sites. I guess, I would agree with the previous poster. If you will be tempted to be on other sites, don't use the laptop in class. If you are using it to enhance your understanding of the material, go ahead and use it. Nursing school is difficult for most students, so give yourself the best chance of success in mastering all the content that is presented during your lectures. Even if the content is the same as the book, the advantage of paying attention during lecture is mastery of the content and less time needed to spend on studying the same content out of class.