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THE ALLEYNIAN 710
From September 2022, laptops will be used more widely in classrooms, with the aim of improving students’ efficiency and organisation, but there are some important issues to consider, as Oliver Abraham (Year 9) discovers
IS
THE
PEN
MIGHTIER
iPAD? THAN
THE
One of the major effects of the Covid pandemic was to revolutionise schools’ use of technology. Between March and June 2021, Dulwich College students across the year groups worked on laptops in lessons, in order to prevent the spread of Covid via exercise books across teachers’ and students’ ‘bubbles’. However, from September 2021 to date, most students have returned to using exercise books during the school day. Homework, on the other hand, is now often submitted online. Looking forward to the future, it is likely that laptops will become one of the main modes of completing and submitting work, and it is hoped that this might make students’ working lives a lot easier and more efficient. Whether or not this is a good idea is highly debatable. Those who question the widespread use of laptops in classrooms cite many objections, including the idea that students might get distracted on the internet, thereby
losing focus on the lesson. In addition, many people are concerned that prolonged use of screens could be damaging to students’ health. Others argue that, as exams are handwritten, it makes sense to be handwriting in class. I was given the opportunity to interview the Director of Studies, Dr McIlwaine, in order to try to understand more about the potential problems and benefits of classwork being done online. I began by asking whether or not it was true that laptops will be the main method of learning or working for students in September 2022, and asking how that would work. Dr McIlwaine explained that one of the College’s priorities is to find a balance ‘between the traditional way of teaching and the more virtual way of teaching’. She added that the pandemic and lockdown had allowed the College to see the benefits of students using computers to organise and store their work, noting that it also arguably offered more efficient marking
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