Technology

Andre de Souza Vieira

Huda Almogren

Gold A2 Writing

July 30 2015

        Day after day the technology is getting better, why we will keep stunned in the time and still using textbooks in the classrooms? The notebook computers exist since 1981 but at 90`s it became very popular in the world, the idea of a computer that is portable is something so handy and can help us a lot. Use notebook computers will bring a lot of facilities to the students, for example they do not need to carry a lot of textbooks to school, they can do researches in the midst of the class and it will make the classes flow faster.

        The notebook computers can replace all textbooks, so instead of carrying a lot of textbooks, the students can just use one notebook or tablet that is so much lighter. One tablet for example can weight only 298 grams or 0.657 pounds (Galaxy Tab S) and only this object can replace all textbooks that students usually use. This type of change can improve a lot the health of the students, it is obvious that carry a backpack full of textbooks in your back almost every day is not a good thing for your health.

        Probably every class the students have questions to do, and a lot of this questions (almost all) are easier to be resolved just with a few clicks with your computer, that way the students do not need to interrupt the class all the time (just when it is really necessary). In addition it is important to remember that a lot of students are shy, so they have something to ask to the teacher and they just do not ask, the notebook computer can also resolve this problem.

        Using the notebook computer in the class room will give to the teacher more time in their classes to, the time that we usually spend copying the things of the blackboard is so much more comparing the time that we take to type on the computers, withal we can compare the time that we spend to erase things to, instead of pick up your eraser and erase what you wrote, with your computer you use only one button. The teachers also can use another methods to give the material to students, like sending slides to him or websites, this way they do not need to copy anything.

There is a lot of researches about this subject, for example, at the United States Military Academy at West Point (USMA) the freshmen already started to use their notebook computer in class. In 2003 some instructors of the USMA started to study if the using of notebook computers would help in the students learning. In this study they separated the students in two groups, which one would use the notebook computers and the other don’t. The results were really awesome. The students that used the laptops in class got the average score of 86.8 percent, while the students that didn’t used the laptops got 83.5 percent.

Another great conclusion of this study was the comments of the students about this. Some of the phrases were: “In this course, my critical thinking ability increased” or “My instructor was enthusiastic and energetic when presenting course material”. Another statistics about this research that was very compatible with my points was the percentage of students that said about that facility about the note-taking with the computer, seventy-three percent of the students commented this point in their conclusion about the study.

The Unesp (State University of Sao Paulo) did one study about this same topic, the name of the study was “Learning Objects Classroom: Resources, Methods and Strategies for Improving Teaching Quality”. The university already tested more than 400 students during two years and the results were very exciting and positive about the use of notebook computer in classes.

The study used some different resources for test the laptops in the classrooms, like animations, simulations and games in mathematics and physics classes. While the teachers were teaching combinatorics, for example, they used some games to show how much different combination of clothes one character can use, for teaching about arrangement they used the game to organize different football teams.