“Mom, I want to switch schools,” I said one day after coming home with news that our sister school would be implementing a new personal laptop program for its students. At my school, we had many computer labs and portable carts in classrooms with the newest version of the Apple laptop, but that was not enough. I wanted to take one home with me and have one with me at all times, and now that some of my friends at our rival school would have them, I was very bitter towards my own school.
However, that next year as my friends from the neighboring school began their new program in which math problems and note taking were all completely on a Dell notebook, they all also began to spend much time waiting in the school’s technology office or crying that all of their work had somehow been deleted due to technical malfunctions. As I heard horror stories of losing 10 page essays and having computers die while taking an online test, I became much less jealous of their computers.
Research has proved that when students write things down on paper, information usually stays in the brain longer and clearer than when written out on a computer. The technology of the world today is indeed greatly advanced and has enhanced our world in more ways than we can imagine, but I believe that in high schools, the best way to infiltrate a strong curriculum and provide a firm foundation of education is to maintain the old-fashioned pen and paper route. Of course the utilization and introduction of new educational technology for certain circumstances is definitely beneficial when it comes to projects and teaching methods, but when taking notes, solving equations, taking tests, or even writing in-class essays, I believe that using pen and paper not only avoids all technological problems, but also enhances learning.
At my high school, each student was required to buy a certain laptop through the school. At the beginning of freshman year I thought this was awesome, but I then realized I was required to type everything rather than hand write it. I became so use to spell check, that when I would write inclass essays, I struggled with simply spelling and grammatical errors. I think there are benefits of having laptops, but I agree with Audrey Hepburn's statement: writing down material helps students absorb the material better.
ReplyDeleteMy highschool also had this program. Each student was required to buy the IBM tablet and take it to every class. The tablet style computers came with a stylist, a pen that wrote on the screen, and each screen could fold down to be easily written on. While I loved the idea at first, by my graduation day I was more than ecstatic to turn it in. Not only had my tablet cost me much time in the technology office waiting for the technicians to fix it, but I had also lost 2 major papers due to system crashes. it was miserable! I also completely agree with audrey and molly in that hand writing notes is MUCH more valuable than typing them. By senior year I was not using my tablet to take notes in ANY class. This definitely paid off because despite my senioritis, my grades senior year were the best they had been since I was in the 9th grade.
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