Yesterday’s post about useful iPad apps for students stirred up lots of interesting discussion, including debates over whether a tablet was a better choice for a student than a notebook PC. But there’s one thread in the conversation I do take issue with: the idea that you shouldn’t have any form of technology at a lecture, because you’ll only get distracted.
A post this morning describing how you can tweak the Book Depository to get cheaper prices resulted in several commenters suggesting it was unethical to even discuss how to do that, let alone actually doing that. I don’t see the same kinds of reactions when Lifehacker discusses using BitTorrent to download TV shows or setting up proxies to view Hulu content — but if you’re being logical and rational, there’s actually no real difference between the two topics.
