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.

Comments

"Teens don't read"

Earlier today Maureen Johnson pointed out that the view of "teens don't read" in the UK is deeply entrenched (which is a word that I now love and had never heard before). As a teenager in the UK, the stigma around reading seems to be - to me - it's "uncool", it's "geeky", there "aren't any good books out there". I think the fact that a lot of teenagers in British schools are exposed to older literature or, perhaps, not that popular literature in lessons and forced into over-analysing and spending countless hours on 'what the author meant'. A point that was raised in this twitter discussion was that people didn't want to be seen reading, or didn't want to be seen reading certain books. It's made me realise that I never ever ever see people reading in the older years in my school ( ever ). Perhaps the odd year 7 (12 year old) or year 8 (13 year old) will read, but - from experience - they will probably be ...

Expectations

I haven't even attempted to write this blog post until now because I haven't really fully contemplated the goings on of this past week. To say they have been crazy, mad, bonkers... dumbfounding even would be a slight understatement. After spending the last three days recuperating and avidly watching season 2 of Gilmore Girls I have finally realised that I, Claire Margerison, have just left school. I have four exams and a results and that's it. Kaput. Done. Bam. Gone. Poof. Weird. My last day and leavers' ball (prom, whatever you may call it) were sublime - and I genuinely mean that. Other than the nearly fainting and having to leave and getting laughed at in the leavers' assembly, it was utterly perfect. I spent a majority of my prom catching up with teachers and just talking to them about the future, about the past, about my ex-boyfriend in particular (hah, sorry Michael - suffice to say I think you enjoyed the conversations too!). It was amusing and fun and ...

Books and other musings!

I love books. If you know me, you probably know that I love books, because I am now on a leaflet that is advertising Young Volunteering over however a larger area. It's rather disconcerting (and, to be quite frank, the picture could be nicer too!) that people can see my face whenever they want to... not that they can't do that anyway, what with making the YouTube videos and what have you thingy ma bob. This book to your *works out left and right in head* right (? I have no idea... my brain is sleepy) is the book that John Green recently recommended and I have also recently purchased because of this recommendation. I learnt last time ( Anna-and-the-French-Kiss- last-time) that John Green is pretty damn good at book recommendations! I run a reading group with some of the people I volunteer with at my library and we're just getting started. We've had three people turn up so far ( I know. ) but we're working on it! I'm currently annoyed because I wrote a lovely...

Practically Alice

Search This Blog