Ipads for High School

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Technology is a distraction with study after study demonstrating its ineffectiveness. . Reading, writing, arithmetic. Stick to the basics

What century? You are decades out of touch.

NP here. Well, not so fast with this criticism. In my experience with kids over several years, requiring kids to do school work using the internet and software programs isn't bad if parents can monitor the computer use, but my observation is that private schools make this much tougher when they require kids to have mobile access to the internet via laptops, IPads, etc. Yes, you can try to make the same house rules, but it is practically harder to enforce when the technology is mobile. Add to this that a number of schools (maybe most), don't really put serious parental controls on the devices. The lure of instant messaging, Facebook, etc. while doing homework -- including having to ignore on onslaught of incoming messages -- is tough for any kid. In that sense, such technology really can interfere with the efficiency and efficacy of studying.

I am a teacher -- one who uses technology a fair amount -- and there is a lot to this post. Technology is the classic double-edged sword. If you talk to the kids and they trust you, they will be very honest about the tremendous amounts of time they waste while in their rooms doing homework for a long overall time period. I don't blame them -- what a universe of temptations! On the other hand, an argument can be made that the "genie is out of the bottle" -- the vast majority of kids have smartphones and would have and use them even if they were not doing assignments online -- and that having kids be highly comfortable with technology is very important and worth some slippage in homework diligence.

I honestly don't know on this one.

[Anonymous]

I'm 100% fine with high school use. Prior to that I much prefer the motor skills that come with handwriting and the visual aspect of reading paper rather than a screen.

And I TOTALLY agree with the savings on school textbooks! So much cheaper to get or even rent ebooks.