Good for you, not using a slide rule! Those just make people lazy.
iPad compulsory at school
- Thread starter Miss Chicken
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Good for you, not using a slide rule! Those just make people lazy.
I am guessing its been while since you were a "kid", its hard to control a large class of children or teens, give them a fancy toy that can be played with only makes it worse.
The fact that a lot of parents believe it's the school's job to raise their kids... lots of children don't know how to behave!
Have you met any teenagers lately?
You're going to get kids who don't listen. And what do you do with them? You'd have to take their iPad away from them. It's the same problem high schools are having with cellphones. It's just one more thing to distract the kids from paying attention to their schoolwork.
You want kids to use iPads in class? Fine, but the schools should provide them. It's what we did in high school with laptops. The school provided them when we needed them, and then they took them away when we were done.
When I was at school there were complaints that children were being allowed to use log books instead of learning how to use slide rules. Now both slide rules and log books are mostly things of the past yet somehow mathematics continues on.
and we mucked around just as much 40 years ago. We played pen and paper games with the child next to us, we wrote notes and threw them around the classroom, we doodled over our text books, we whispered to each other and often we didn't pay attention. Our teachers dealt with it, as teachers today should deal with it.
In an ideal world all text books, stationary etc would be free at school but, for the most part, they are not. If the schools are providing them we are all still paying for them in some way.
If a teacher even tried discipline like they used 40 years ago they'd be in jail...
Indeed. Teachers are barely allowed to discipline kids anymore. Aside from a stern word, there's not a lot they can do.
And it's fine if they want to include a small fee for iPad use throughout the school year. You pay a fee for textbooks, but they're not yours to keep. You use them when you need them, and then you give them back. Again, I'd be fine with the schools buying a bunch of iPads for the kids to use. I just think it's a little unreasonable to ask the parents to fork over several hundred extra dollars to purchase an iPad that has questionable value in the classroom.
The school should prove that iPads are a worthy investment before forcing the parents to buy them.
The best teachers I had didn't need to used corporal punishment. In fact when I was at high school there was very little corporal punishment but it was an all-girl school (which might or might not have been an factor influencing the use of such punishment).
Besides if discipline in some schools is so poor adding iPads won't make the situation much worse.
Besides if discipline in some schools is so poor adding iPads won't make the situation much worse.
I'd rather not use one in my classroom. It would pose too many challenges for certain students (behavior-wise). And there is no way I'd want to use an iPad with some of the students i had last spring.
I'd rather have desktop computers bolted to a table in the corner.
I'd rather have desktop computers bolted to a table in the corner.
This type of (fairly) small money would typically come from a foundation through the school system.
Plus they wouldn't order enough iPADs for every single student, since they won't be all using iPADs all the time at once. The schools would have someone responsible for the iPADS and deliver them to classrooms based on requests from educators.
Laptops are already required in many public high schools in Australia whether you can afford them or not. You do get 50% back from govco for them at tax time but that also driven the cost of laptops up.
On the plus side many textbooks are now available in e-form and that is the whole move with the laptops, to have all your texts right there. Considering that you can pay over a 1000.00 to buy a year 12's textbooks this is certainly appealing. (In Australia you buy your own textbooks in high school at least, which starts in year 7.)
On the plus side many textbooks are now available in e-form and that is the whole move with the laptops, to have all your texts right there. Considering that you can pay over a 1000.00 to buy a year 12's textbooks this is certainly appealing. (In Australia you buy your own textbooks in high school at least, which starts in year 7.)
No, they're not, they're necessary tools in the workplace and it's important that students learn how to use them. Don't get me wrong, it's important that students learn how to do these things without using calculators first, but once they've learned them it is neither necessary nor efficient to do them without the calculator.
To make my point clear: Two people apply for a job as an engineer, one knows how to use a slide-rule and math tables while the other knows how to use a calculator and matlab. The second person is the one most likely to get the job as they have the most practical skill-set.
I'm not against them learning how to use them, but they go to far, they need to learn and maintain the inherent skills while practicing skills with more modern tools...and on a side note...your avatar is very nightmare conducive, I do not like it.
Ninjacore, most of your arguments seem to be based on the idea that students would magically forget how to perform basic math as soon as they touched a keyboard, and this is certainly not the case. A laptop computer is not a magical device that can instantly solve problems just by the fact that it's electronic; you have to think through how the problem is supposed to be solved, such as re-writing equations in slope-intercept form. A lot of it is drudgery, like "subtract this number and move it to this side of the equation"- basic tasks that do nothing to add to the lesson. Making students use pen and paper, as you have encouraged, would simply encourage them to not do their homework. Instead of "Okay, I just have to finish up these last 10 problems and I'm home free" it becomes "Holy crap, I have to do all these word problems by hand, each one taking about half an hour to finish."
To tell you guys the truth, i'd take my 100€ ZTE Light / Optus MyTab over an iPad anyday.
I was sitting on the train on my way to buy an ipad in stockholm when i bought my ZTE. and quite frankly, i haven't regretted it. while i admit that ipad is better, my ZTE can do all the things i was going to use my iPad to. and its more compact.
my school was going to buy ipads, but we managed to talk them into something android based.
I was sitting on the train on my way to buy an ipad in stockholm when i bought my ZTE. and quite frankly, i haven't regretted it. while i admit that ipad is better, my ZTE can do all the things i was going to use my iPad to. and its more compact.
my school was going to buy ipads, but we managed to talk them into something android based.
I'm very sorry for this question, but I have to ask: Just how old are you? And do you have even a single shred of data to back up your assertions that technology is destroying the minds of our youth?
So is the iPad compulsory? The story makes it sound like a portable computing device is compulsory, and mentioned the iPad as an example. If that's the case, I don't see a huge problem. Computers are essential these days.
However, if it specifically is an iPad that is compulsory, then it is a huge load of bullshit.
However, if it specifically is an iPad that is compulsory, then it is a huge load of bullshit.
A TI-89 can solve equations for you without you needing to rearrange them. That's been true since I was in high school. (What the heck, TI?)
In grade 9 you probably haven't even completed algebra yet, much less calculus. I definitely think there's a downside to allowing the use of advanced calculators at that level. Which isn't to say they can't be used at all, but care must be taken to ensure the student does not become dependent.