Perhaps the idea of shiny, new technology has distracted from the main point of education — learning. Though schools and homes are eager to embrace technology, before signing an iPad responsibility form as freshmen, we should consider if the iPads are actually beneficial to our education. 

There are two sides to this argument that many teachers and students share.

Some believe the iPads are just a disadvantage to students. They claim iPads are a major distraction and an bad way to take notes.

On the other hand, many believe the iPads have greatly increased efficiency and personal organization.

Many teachers have noticed an overwhelming majority of students in their classes who tend to play games on their iPads, instead of being attentive during the lesson.

This does not only distract them, but it also tends to draw the attention of many other surrounding students.

“I get distracted daily from my friends playing games on their iPads,” said Nicole Hakimian, a sophomore.

In addition, some students believe that with iPads, their note taking has become less effective, and prefer the old fashioned paper and pen.

“Personally, I believe iPads are beneficial in that we have unlimited access to the internet during school hours, which helps us complete our work,” said Heather Nessenoff, a sophomore. “However, on the other hand, it’s bad because we don’t have the experience of physically writing down our information, or using physical text.”

Although this may be true, I believe the overall positive functions of the iPads outweigh the negative opinions that are common amongst students and teachers.

Flashback a couple of years ago, before we were provided with these handy devices…

Students had no choice but to walk around school with binders upon binders filled with hundred of papers. Our backpacks were extremely heavy and a burden to carry around. Not only that, we were extremely unorganized.

However, before school started, we made sure we would be organized for the upcoming year.

We made designated locations in our binders for each specific subject, and each specific section: one for tests, one for notes, and one for homework.

We promised ourselves we would remain this organized for the rest of the year… at least we hoped we would.

Flash forward 2 months…

Our tests are crumbled at the bottom of our bags, we can’t find our homework, and our papers are exploding out of our bag upon opening it, but we’re too lazy to put it back in its designated location.

When we misplaced something due to our disorganization, we were forced to make up an excuse that had to be made up on the spot.

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Thanks to our iPads, however, these classic excuses can’t really be used anymore, placing more responsibility on the student.

Now, all our notes are neatly organized in notability folders and backed up to google drive, pretty much eliminating all those past problems of misplacing important files.

In addition, for the most part, our iPads are pretty much all we really need in the day, besides maybe a folder for a couple of loose sheets of paper we’re given here and there.

In future years, when we’ll need to reference our past, we can just head to google drive and access all our notes from even middle school in just one click. This is much more convenient than having to dig up all of those hoarded packets and papers we’ve continuously hid in a closet.

Without our iPads, our school lives would have been very inefficient, and thanks to our iPads it’s become the complete opposite.