Tech or toy?
Posted Sep 2, 2010 02:34:39 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Electronics will be the biggest ticket items you buy before sending the kids back to school. But you might find it a struggle between what your child wants to take to class and what you think he or she needs.
“There’s a lot of peer pressure associated with it,” concedes tech expert Carmi Levy.
While every family will ultimately decide for itself what’s suitable and what’s not for the classroom setting, Levy says a teacher can be a good guide.
“Kids of any age need to research, they need to keep in touch with each other, they need the ability to write things, they need the ability to edit things,” Levy lists in an interview with 570’s Gary Doyle Show. “It starts and ends as far as I’m concerned with a computer that does the job.”
Levy suggests trying to separate the needs from the wants of your child, particularly at the elementary school level. By talking to the teacher, he says any parent can figure out what tools their child needs to accomplish the goals being set out in class. And at elementary school age, that does not mean a smartphone or any other kind of portable electronic device.
“If the (home) computer is 8 years old, falling apart and laden with viruses, that’s where you start,” Levy recommends. “You can build a really strong homework protocol around a computer that really does the job for your kid, of any age.”
Naturally, needs change as your children age. By the time they’re in high school, there might be a greater demand for such things as smartphones. The technology can be used, according to Levy, to facilitate group discussions about projects and other classroom work.
While you may start to see more laptops at the high school level, Levy says it’s wise to check with your school first to ensure that they’re allowed. Every school sets its own policy and the technology could collect dust if your son or daughter is not allowed to take it to class.
“You also want to make sure your kid is responsible to be able to care and feed one of these things,” Levy says. “It is not like a textbook, they can be fragile and, let’s face it, the average 15-year old boy isn’t exactly going to be treating these things with kid gloves.”
That’s one of the reasons Levy recommends buying the extended warranty with the product. He calls it “cheap insurance” and, at the post-secondary level — where Levy thinks the technology is indispensable — it can be a grade saver because the warranty will often provide a replacement product while the original is being repaired.
Levy also notes that waxing nostalgic for paper, pen and longhand can actually hinder progress in college or university because the student will simply fall behind in a lecture hall full of laptops.
“They’re (post-secondary students) much more responsible for themselves and they’re essentially leaning on these devices not only to keep up in class but to keep track of each other, to keep track of their study groups and to keep in touch with the outside world,” Levy notes.
In many cases, he says the technology can replace the phone as a way of keeping in touch for students who leave the city or even the province to pursue their post-secondary education.
