You have the same problem I do. I always have a gazillion tabs and windows open in Safari, and I am always pushing the limits of that browser. I guess I need 10 gb of ram just to really browse the web the way I want to. At anyrate, you might try this product called webstractor from SoftChaos. I have not tried it yet but it looks interesting in that it helps you manage your web history in an effective way. I saw it at MacWorld this year.

On the classroom discussion I completely agree with most of your points. Especially the point about alienating disabled users. I think though the real issue is the undivided attention and note taking itself. I recognize that there are multitaskers and different learning styles. But in my opinion students really need to get over the note taking fetish. I have seen students take excessive notes, but for what end? Generally the notes are unreadable afterwards, and generally get in the way of comprehension. Socrates was very down on writing because he felt it destroyed memory. I think if someone really cares about about notes take your ipod attach a microphone to it and record the lecture or discussion. Or if you don’t own an iPod get a $20 tape recorder. Much simpler and much more fidelity than notes. But that is just my opinion.

Now on the other hands notes are useful for capturing the mental content of what one was thinking during the lecture or seminar. But I don’t know how many students do this with their note taking. But I can see this as a useful activity. But I know a lot of people incessantly try to transcribe every word of the lecture which seems futile to me.

But the bottom line is the approach of the instructor. Authoritarian classroom structures should be avoided, absolutely. You are definitely correct in saying that turning the chairs in a circle, etc can go a long way. But that would require actually thinking about pedagogical method and not just the content of one’s class. I can tell you the worst class I ever had was my first quarter of the first year of college. It was a physical geography course. Interesting subject, terrible instructor. The guy spent the entire time his back facing the students writing up inane notes on the whiteboard which were just summaries of the textbook and the students spent all their time transcribing these notes verbatim. I did the same thing because I was young and naive and thought that was what you were suppose to do. And it went on like this for every single class period the entire quarter. It was like the note taking was supplanting the content of the text book. A colossal waste of time. I was very disappointed in the class and would have preferred the instructor spent classroom time providing us with information that supplemented the text book. Of course I actually read the textbook for the course because I was interested in the subject matter, but I am not so sure how many of the other students even bothered given the structure of the class.