iPads for, um, learning

Our school has made the decidedly huge leap forward and has offered all our students to purchase an iPad over the course of a number of years. Now, I'm all for enhancing learning and I'm all for moving with the times but when I walk through the corridor at lunch time and people are not conversing, oh no, but sitting on their iPads I get a little downhearted.

I'm not saying that I don't do this either; there are times when I will sit on my phone and not talk, or read and not talk but there's always been some people talking in those situations.

I can understand the attraction of an iPad; there's an abundance of apps and there's emails and there's messaging and facebook so it's not exactly unsocial... but it's somewhat unnerving when no one is talking because of these devices...

Perhaps people need to look up and look around them a little more sometimes. I don't know, iPads seem a good idea in some situations but maybe not this one.

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Practically Alice

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