I went to college in the mid-90s when laptop use was nearly unheard of. I used a Powerbook Duo to take notes in most of my classes. I was often able to type as fast as the speaker was able to talk. I took particularly good notes for an entire semester of European history 1700-1850. At the end of the semester, I handed the professor a floppy disk and a print copy of my notes. He was so delighted by this unexpected "gift", and he was able to critically review his teaching.

I went back and worked at my alma mater as an education technologist after a few years in industry. I supported BlackBoard, deployed Moodle and Wordpress, and encouraged faculty to explore collaborative research and writing wikis. I can only imagine how engaged in the topic a class could become using a tool like iEtherpad.com to modify wikispace.

I remember getting distracted by a neighbors doodles in some classes. Should we ban the spiral-bound notebook?