I am a resident of Princeton Junction and a seventh grader at Community Middle School. I want to talk to you about the elementary students getting Chrome books for schoolwork, and not the middle school students, or even the high school students getting them instead.
For one, the elementary kids are usually less responsible, meaning they could misplace or damage the laptops easily. Also, they barely need the laptop because they are usually not assigned homework that needs access to online resources. Also I think in elementary grades, kids should write, not type. So there will be almost no point in giving the younger kids a laptop.
I, a middle school student, would need the school laptop more because we have more computer assignments, and we are usually more responsible, so the laptop will stay with us in good condition. In our classes, we almost never have enough computers or laptops, meaning some students have to get laptops from another classroom.
Secondly, almost all the laptops that we do use in middle school are extremely slow in starting up and loading, allowing us to have less time to do our work, which isn’t very helpful, especially when we have a deadline to meet. The act of acquiring another laptop from another room also takes time away from doing class or homework, along with taking the laptop back to the other room, because then you will also have to stop working early if you don’t want to be late for your next class or the bus. Also if a student has a personal laptop, then it will take less time to load the files because they will be saved to the laptop, not just the account.
As you have noted the curriculum and teaching style in our school system has higher demand for electronic media, thus I think the district should reconsider who gets the laptops.
Dhiraj Chakravorty
