One instance of laptops in the classroom

I've read complaints that students aren't attending to class lectures but to distractions on their laptops. I can believe it--the temptation to distraction is gigantic. For me, anyhow.

I used to go to collaboration meetings for CMS at CERN. The ages of the participants ranged from early 20's up into 70's. The first meeting was held in the main auditorium, and the first talk was the last quarter in review, plans, and status of the machine. Everybody went, and I invariably got there late enough to either have to stand or at best sit in the far back. (the morning after a long flight and time zone shift, of course)

This was followed by overview talks from the various detector groups and physics groups--no details, just the big pictures.

The hall was dark so you could see the slides displayed.

That is, it was dark in the room until the first talk ended. Then there came a brightening as hundreds of laptops opened.

From the back I could see a sampling of what people were doing. About half started finishing up their own powerpoint presentations, and most of the rest were answering emails or working on code: Slowly, because the WiFi wasn't quite up to handling a hundred laptops at once.

This anecdote is probably not applicable to your average college student.