More people are using their laptops in class than ever — and they’re using them for more than just learning.

Students using computers to enrich their classroom experience was one of the great promises of the 21st century and the wireless Internet revolution. It’s not hard to tell, though, which Binghamton University students are using their newfound technological freedom to take notes and who’s watching movies, shopping online, sending their friends messages or even doing homework for another class.

“I’m in the class. I pretend to listen, but I’m just doing my other work or looking up information for my future classes,” said Cameron Keng, a sophomore English and accounting major. “But when I don’t have work to do, I just watch movies. You know sometimes they have subtitles, so I don’t even need to hear it. I just read the subtitles.”

For Keng, goofing off digitally is nothing new: he’s been doing it since high school.

“I’ve been doing this too long. I bought myself those portable DVD players,” he said. “I have a remote control so that I can just play on my table. I wouldn’t pay attention. Everyone around me was watching the movie that I was watching, so some people got mad at me, but I didn’t really care back in high school,” he said.

Movies notwithstanding, there are those Bearcats who resist temptation and do put their computers to academic use in the classroom. For some, the keyboard has replaced pen and ink as the preferred medium for note taking. It’s faster, they say, and more accurate.

“I found my ability to take notes and pay attention has definitely increased by using my laptop,” said senior political science and French major Marianito D. Mabutas Jr.

Lorenzo Kopp agreed.

“Basically I can type faster than I can write at this point, and it’s a lot easier to reread than … handwriting,” said the freshman electrical engineering major. “I download all lecture notes and slides, so if I get lost, I can go online, open up slides and backtrack a little and then catch up where it is.”

To Kopp, the students who use their computers for messing around instead of boosting their GPA are often a major source of distraction. He’d rather not hear the sounds coming out of the laptops and users giggling at the screen, he said.

Keng, meanwhile, didn’t seem to care.

“I usually don’t notice [what others are doing] because I’m too busy doing my things,” he said. “If I see somebody else is watching movies, I will look at what they are watching and I will download it. Then I will be watching their movies, too. One time, someone was watching some movie in the class and I downloaded the same episode and watched it.”

And Mabutas didn’t seem to take issue with digital distractions. He was sure that students will always find ways to not care about what the professor is saying.

“Just as many people I see who are playing video games in a class, I see the same, if not even more, people make drawings or playing tic-tac-toe. People still can pass notes in the old-fashioned way,” he said.

A number of BU professors, including economics teacher Michael O’Hara, seemed to agree with Mabutas’ sentiment, and were ambivalent about students’ use of laptops in the classes they teach.

O’Hara doesn’t necessarily think that having computers is a must, and believes that the potential for distraction is always there. But, if used correctly, he said, laptops can facilitate better note taking and more efficient learning.

“I had a student a couple of semesters ago, who actually took notes on his computer and at the end of semester, gave me a CD with the notes on it in case I want to give it to somebody,” O’Hara said.

Of course, there are those who abuse the system. Keng’s name comes up again.

“Some professors think I’m very studious … I always sit right in the front row. Nobody thinks somebody who sits in the front row is watching videos and playing games,” Keng said. “That’s why I just sit there and my professor doesn’t come around to me. People never expect me to do that.”