Tablets in schools?iSay no!

By:

Clayton LeCain-Guffey

Rough Draft

In current day society, school corporations are making budget cuts like crazy. Laying off

teachers, getting rid of some classes, and trying to save as much money as possible. Yet some

people are still begging to spend millions of dollars on a new initiative known as 1:1 teaching.

This paper will explain why using 1:1 is not a good idea, including the high price, the fact that

there is no proof of increased test scores, and that it will make teaching more difficult for all of

the teachers.

On Amazon.com, a first generation iPad that is in a used condition is, at cheapest,

$114.88. Schools would be paying at least that much just for one iPad. A 4th generation iPad is at

least $250.00 used. Assuming that a school corporation will get around 2,000 tablets that adds up

to a minimum of $500,000. That not even the price for new tablets, only used. The second point

is that more than likely there will be a lot of damaged tablets. A repair kit for only one iPad is at

least $23.95 (Amazon). If half of the tablets get damaged, that’s another $239.50 that the school

corporation must come up with for the repairs. Finally, another big fee is textbook and app

prices. One textbook is $15.00 in the iPad app store (Apple). Assuming that a student has four

textbooks, that’s $60 per tablet. For 2000 tablets, that would be $120,000 more added to the

price. In total, for only 2,000 4th generation iPads it is $620,239.50. That is a huge amount of

money that, with all of the budget cuts schools are doing, is not affordable at the moment.

Now with all of that money, one would think that tablets would improve test scores at

least a little bit, right? Not at all. One source said that one school had been using 1:1 for about

ten years and that the scores in reading and math hadn’t changed at all since then, showing that

1:1 didn’t affect test scores (NY Times). Four school corporations in California did a test with

some students using tablets and some learning the original way. The test showed that there

wasn’t any improvement of test scores from the students with the tablets (betanews). The data is

pretty weak. It’s very difficult when we’re pressed to come up with convincing data.” Said Tom

VanderArk on the topic of 1:1 in school. Some sources that favored the idea said that students

could learn at their own pace. That’s not necessarily good because if one student is almost done

with a textbook within two months, and another is only a few chapters in, the teacher is going to

have a lot of difficulty making a test. When it comes to projects or certain activities, “learning at

the students own pace” may not be as good as it sounds. Finally, at a middle school age students

are trying more and more to not have to write. Using 1:1 would not help with preventing this.

Not only will it make handwriting worse, but there are other factors as well. One source said that

touch-screen keyboard had many errors and were difficult to use. Students would be so use to

using a touch screen that they wouldn’t write much anymore which could affect them in the

future.

Finally, implementing 1:1 technology would be a pain in the butt for teachers. They

would have to remake all of their plans, projects, maybe even homework and test worksheets so

that they would work with the iPad technology. One problem is that there is a lack of USB ports

in iPads, which would be difficult for teachers. If they want their students to do a worksheet

through the tablet, they would have to use a cloud software that has been proven to be very

difficult. Another problem is that iPads could be a serious distraction in the classroom. Students

could be playing games, looking up inappropriate things, or just messing around on the tablet

during class and the teacher may not know it for a long period of time. If anything, it could get

the teacher in serious trouble. Students could also cheat on tests. They could have a file on the

tablet with all of the answers for a test and delete before a teacher could catch them using it. Not

only that, but students could share test answers to each other doing a feature in Google Docs (if it

is available to them). This feature allows students to have a kind of live chat in a document.

Tablets in schools could simply making cheating much easier for all of the students.

1:1 is a very bad idea for schools. From the high costs that will just put corporations in

debt, to the fact that there is no proof of enhanced test scores, it is obvious that 1:1 is merely an

idea that gets shoved into the recycling bin. 1:1 would just making teaching even more difficult

and would just stress teachers out due to so much change. Keep 1:1 out of schools, the stress

isn’t worth it.