Maria Libby 8L   

               March  8, 2010                  

               Final Draft

           

We Need Our Laptops Back

     At the beginning of our eighth grade year, we were given brand new, one-thousand dollar laptops. We all were very happy to have a new tool to use at school. As the year has gone on the attitude has changed a bit towards the use of the computers. Several students have been using them for things other than school. Such as facebook and checking personal email. After some of the middle level teachers found this, they proposed that the laptops remain at school until after February vacation. Well, when we all came back from our break, the seventh grades and eighth grade were not given the right to take the laptops home as they were supposed to. Now there has been a lot of talk about when we are going to get them back. Here is mine opinion.

   Okay, I understand that some students are misusing them, but why should you punish everybody? I am one of many students that have been using them correctly and I used the computer for my homework every night. I don’t think that we should have them taken away if certain people’s homework is being completed. There are students making honor roll and working hard to succeed and sometimes it is hard to do that when you can’t bring your laptop home.

 As I started discussing in my previous paragraph I have noticed that I have had a harder time completing my school work. For all of my classes we use them and when homework is assigned, it is very frustrating and stressful to do at school because I know that I only have my hour of study hall to complete things from five classes. Usually we have some homework in all five subjects.

Also, I would like to say that it has been a big help so far this year having these laptops. It has been such a help looking for research and examples. I really think that it is too bad that the teachers here can’t trust us with our school computers. We do a lot of slideshows using the application Keynote and write a lot using Pages. Actually right now using our laptops has been very helpful in our Wabanaki studies, and our science inventions. We also use Noteshare which is a program where us students are able to see interact with each other and our teachers.

    All students have different opinions and this is mine. I know that things are changing and we are learning new ways of working things out. Hopefully when you read this, you are seeing my point of view and the values that us students have.