https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/tablets-proliferate-in-nations-classrooms-and-take-a-swipe-at-the-status-quo/2014/05/17/faa27ba4-dbbd-11e3-8009-71de85b9c527_story.html

Above is a link from an article in the Washington Post about the use and integration of tablets into the classroom. This is becoming very wide spread throughout classrooms of all ages. The article is 1.5 years old, and was written when tablets were new in the classroom. Althought teaching and technology change rapidly, I think that this article still applies today because tablets are just now becoming a common teaching tool in everyday classrooms.

There were many points in the article that align with my train of thought. First, let me give alittle background. My mom is a middle school teacher in a very rough school in Chicago. This year is the first year that she has tablets in her classroom and all of her coursewear is run through these tablets. The school did not have the budget for each student to receive their own tablet, so she was given a cart of tablets that will be shared amongst students as they rotate from classroom to classroom. Great idea in theory, however, day 2 of this school year three of the tablets were already stolen and two were already broken. The TEACHERS are responsible for them, not the students, since they were not issued to individual students. The teachers are spending more time trying to keep accountability of the tablets than they are teaching.

An issue that is mentioned in the article is school's being able to keep up with this technology. I could not agree with this point more. In the example of my mom's school, her district's limited budget does not allow for strong enough bandwith to support all of the student's on their tablets trying to connect. There is so much time wasted in the classroom waiting for assignments or readings to load and dealing with technology glitches.

However, I do believe that tablets in the classroom can have a very modern positive influence in pedagogy. Never before have teachers been able to give their students such flexibility with self-paced learning. Majority of students love technology, learn it at an early age, and find it much more engaging that opening a book. The article above uses the example of students still receiving assignments while school was closed for a snow day. This would have seemed like an impossible task a decade ago. A tablet for each student certainly would have seemed like an unnecessary luxury.

Tablets in the classroom, like most new technology and integrating it into our educational system, will continue to have its growing pains.