He said
I'm not saying that I'm old, but it has been 12 years since I graduated high school and a lot has changed in the world since my grad.
Students entering high school now have a lot different back-to-school lists than I did. When I was in school, you had to get a Five Star binder to be cool. Now with things like smartphones, tablets and iPods, a cool binder probably won't cut it.
I don't think it will be long before every student from Grade 1 to 12 has a tablet in the classroom and although there is the chance for distraction, I think the benefits will outweigh any drawbacks.
For me it is hard to imagine having a smartphone or tablet in high school. We had two computer labs at my high school and I thought that was cool. Having your own personal computer to take from class-to-class would have been amazing.
If I was able to go back in time to high school and bring one item with me from the present day, it would be a tablet. There are so many options of what you can do with them and I think it would help some kids to be more interested in learning.
As far as kids using them for things like social media sites or playing games, the Estevan Comprehensive School already blocks those sites from their students, so doing it on a tablet wouldn't be a problem. You would just need to have the kids all log on to a school server.
However if you were to ask me in 1998 what one item I wanted for going back-to-school it would have been a simple answer from me. I wanted the Nike Air Jordan 13. Those were the coolest sneakers ever back then. And if you had a pair you were one of the lucky ones.
Funny how things have changed over the years. Back in high school I would have been happy with a pair of sneakers, now students' wish lists include personal computers.
She said
There are two things I wish I had when I was in high school: my smartphone and my eReader.
Having a smart phone in high school would have been great, and also really, really bad. It would have made it easy to keep my schedule straight. I could have organized my homework, activities and at-home responsibilities in my calendar. I could have checked my e-mail and my grades online.
Most importantly, I would have stayed up to date on Facebook, which was vitally important in high school (and remains vitally important today). I would never have had to listen to a boring lecture in class.
Of course, these reasons are terrible in their own way. My teachers would have taken my phone away immediately had they seen me checking social media in class. It's also kind of important to pay attention to what's being taught in the classroom, since you're going to have to write some sort of a test on the material. So my grades would have suffered. If I'm being honest, I spent a lot of time on my non-smart phone when in high school, and my performance didn't suffer that badly.
Having an eReader would have been another good and bad item. I could have used my eReader to study and to read the books I pretended to read in high school. It's so lightweight and easy to transport that it wouldn't be a pain to haul around like so many of the giant textbooks we read in science classes.
But again, an eReader would have been distracting. I definitely would have spent more time reading in class, which I did anyway, but I would have been sneakier about it. There are only so many ways I could hide my Harry Potter books in my binder before it got pretty obvious that I was reading a giant novel instead of paying attention. eReaders are sleek and much less noticeable.
I stand by the fact that both an eReader and a smartphone would have made high school better. But I'm also realistic enough to know I would have had them at school for all of a week before they were confiscated and I never saw them again.
