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Notes or Laptops?


"The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”-L.P Hartley.

This school year, the TABC administration has adopted a policy stating that you can not use a laptop during class. Though some students dislike this rule, the administration believes that laptops are a huge distraction in the classroom and thus should be banned.

One lingering question is whether this new policy will have a positive or negative impact on the classroom environment.

Rabbi Ezra Wiener, Principal of Judaic Studies, was very eager to share his opinion on this matter. He strongly believes that allowing laptops in class not only negatively affects students but teachers as well.

He feels that having teachers stroll through the classroom to see if students are actually taking notes on their laptops can be disturbing to them. In addition, he often sees that students who use computers don’t participate in class discussions and don’t comprehend their notes as well.

Rabbi Asher Yablok, Head of School, said that although laptops may sometimes help a lesson, they still cause a strong distraction to students and teachers.

Yablok also feels that notetaking is better without laptops, because students who take notes without them are forced to be more organized. In addition, Yablok noted that students with laptops simply do not comprehend their lessons as well as those with pen and paper.

When asked if the laptop ban had produced a more negative atmosphere to the school, he answered, “Though it has brought more negativity to the kids, they are not honest with themselves.”

Despite his opposition to laptops in the classroom, Rabbi Yablok mentioned a very strong contrasting argument: some students have complained that the day feels much longer now than the days in previous years. Teachers may be finding it harder to hold the interest of the students who are used to looking at a laptop screen and now no longer have one.

TABC can find support for its policy in a recent experiment conducted by The United States Military Academy. The experiment consisted of giving a test to three different classes: the first had unrestricted internet connection during its lesson, the second had a restricted connection, while the third had no connection whatsoever.

How did these classes score on their tests? The first group with full internet connection had the lowest scores - an average of 70.5 percent. The second group with restricted connection rated an average score of 71.7 percent.

The best performers were the third group, who were entirely without the internet - it scored the highest average of 72.9 percent. This seems to suggest that students score higher when not taking notes on a laptop.

Though many TABC faculty members have raised strong arguments in support of the ban, some students have posed counter-arguments.

Junior Eli Turansky argues that “it is truly unfair for the school to think they know better than the kids themselves” regarding if laptop usage will help them specifically.

Turansky believes that laptops can be helpful or unhelpful depending on the individual student; if the students themselves work hard to focus their computer use strictly for school projects, he says, then the pros of computer use will far outweigh the cons.

One can make a point that as the next generation enters the workforce, constant computer usage will be the norm and anyone who is not comfortable using it without distraction will be at a disadvantage.

I believe that learning to use computers in class while still retaining information from our teachers is perhaps the greatest skill we can learn in high school. So although it may distract us initially, laptops will be a great tool for our future careers and should be allowed in the classroom. In fact, learning how to deal with distractions is itself an important skill that students will need to learn to succeed later in the workplace.

However, English Teacher Michael McGoldrick counters this point with a compelling argument: “Using class time to teach students how to deal with distractions is a less effective use of time than simply having students learn without any distractions at all.”

Without question, laptops can serve a valuable place in the classroom. There are many times when students quickly need to look something up or need to write a reminder for themselves. But the big problem remains: when the school gives permission to use a laptop, some students will not be productive and will not use them responsibly.

In the long run, there are many advantages to using laptops in the classroom, but if used irresponsibly, those advantages diminish to nearly nothing.


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