Classroom Tablets: A Memoir

My high school was an early adopter of using tablets for educational purposes. When I was in 11th grade, junior and senior students received tablets. At the time, most people I knew were very skeptical of the use of tablets in the classroom, much more so than now as the phenomenon has become more wide-spread. Of course, most of my friends were excited about the tablets, but that was mostly because they looked forward to playing games on it. None of my classmates took it seriously as a learning tool. I was pretty skeptical of the use of tablets in the classroom then, and two years later, I remained skeptical. I felt the tablet was better at distracting students than it was at educating them.

Looking back, I do see some of the benefits of the tablet. I definitely stopped using physical textbooks after getting one, which benefited me as I no longer needed to carry textbooks around. My school still had the textbooks, though I could see why this would eventually be cost-effective. My English teacher senior year was also quite creative in her use of the tablets in the classroom. For example, we would often write in-class responses to readings and e-mail them to her.

“No Child Left Untableted” failed to address the problems I encountered with tablets in the classroom. At the end of the day, I don’t think tablets really did a whole lot to improve education. I also went to a very privileged school that had all the resources it could possibly desire, so I really don’t think there was much room for improvement in the first place. When it comes to cost-effectiveness of tablets, I believe providing students with a device more similar to the nook or the kindle would be better.

The article did end by briefly acknowledging that tablets don’t really address the problems facing with the American school system. I think this quote explains my thoughts on tablets in the classroom after actually experiencing them.

“Still, if everyone agrees that good teachers make all the difference, wouldn’t it make more sense to devote our resources to strengthening the teaching profession with better recruitment, training, support and pay? It seems misguided to try to improve the process of learning by putting an expensive tool in the hands of teachers we otherwise treat like the poor relations of the high-tech whiz kids who design the tool.”