Students and Laptops in High School

As the the topic states this will be a discussion on whether or not students should be allowed to carry laptops at school.

Definitions:

All definition(s) are from http://www.m-w.com......

Laptop - a portable microcomputer having its main components (as processor, keyboard, and display screen) integrated into a single unit capable of battery-powered operation

If you see anything that should be defined please feel free.

There is a 3,000 character limit.

I will be taking the position of being for the ability to carry the laptops thus my opponent shall not want them.

If you do not meet the requirements, feel free to send me a message and I will unlock it or start another with you if it is already taken.

Greetings to my opponent and many thanks for offering this debate. I shall be taking the position of students not being allowed to carry Laptops on a high school campus.

Out of fear that I may be entertaining the classic DDO "two sentence trap", I shall keep this first round brief by providing one contention:

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CONTENTION: Laptops encourage students to participate in non academic activities |
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I have here a very credible source indicating the the above claim is true: http://www.nytimes.com...

Indeed, even as a college student, I have attended a great deal of lectures, only to notice the great deal of students who'd be playing World of Warcraft during class or frequenting facebook/myspace. The temptation to goof off is simply too high, which is confirmed through study on this matter.

Rather than allow our lowly rated education system to continue plummeting, it would be most reasonable to deny the privilege of laptops. I'm sure that any benefit which they may supposedly provide can easily be remedied by having computer labs and simply increasing lecture efficiency (which I shall explain next wrong).

I shall leave at that for now and shall elaborate on anything above if needed next round.

I thank Logical-Master for being willing to debate this topic.

As he said having the school issued laptops has caused for less students to pay attention to the lecture and more likely to frequent sites like Myspace and Facebook. But with proper school monitoring and the correct filtration systems and the willingness of the school administration to enforce it, laptops in schools could be in the near future.

I realize that as your source stated students can and most likely will find ways to get around systems, some people think that is why they were invented, but if school administrators were to enforce the rules laid down by the school the students are likely to follow them.

I shall leave it to my opponent.

RE: "But with proper school monitoring and the correct filtration systems and the willingness of the school administration to enforce it, laptops in schools could be in the near future."

What my opponent is insisting is by far easier said than done. If these problems with laptops usage in high schools could so easily be solved, it's clear the school administrations cited in my source would have simply taken the time to act upon my opponent's advice. Clearly, the sheer amount of EXTRA school monitoring, filtration systems (whatever that means) and school administration work needed to maintain control over student laptop usage would be a tremendous burden to adhere to.

Ladies and gentleman, we must once again take into consideration the fact that our education system (which, may I remind you, is ranked poorly in comparison to other education systems around the world) is struggling to advance and that the necessity to improve upon the means by which students are actually educated is far greater than whatever benefit could be provided by allowing laptops. It is far more reasonable that the amount of effort which my opponent insist be placed towards laptops (which, incidentally, she has yet to provide even a single warrant for) be put towards student education.

Furthermore, I would like to point out that my opponent has not responded to my alternative (which in no way deters student education or redirects administration resources AND allows students to reap the benefits of having computers) which is to simply adhere to the current system and allow students to simply use the school's computer labs. School owned computers are far easier to monitor/control than student laptops.

RE:"but if school administrators were to enforce the rules laid down by the school the students are likely to follow them."

Who says they weren't already enforcing the rules? I'm sure a student being exposed for hacking into the school' database wouldn't end well for said student. The problem is that it can often be discern the identity of these would-be hackers. If computer usage were simply limited to school owned computers, the process of catching trouble makers would be easier.

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CONTENTION: Laptops have been shown not to improve academic achievements
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I sort of alluded to this in the previous round, but never actually came out and stated it. Just to avoid confusion .. .

To quote one of the key lines suggesting this: "After seven years, there was literally no evidence it had any impact on student achievement — none," said Mark Lawson, the school board president here in Liverpool, one of the first districts in New York State to experiment with putting technology directly into students' hands."

BOTTOM LINE: We have good reason to believe that allowing laptops does not improve education, but only harms it. Keep in mind that PRO has provided us with no reason as to why laptops should be allowed.

Laptops would make it incredibly easy to cheat on multiple things. From just being able to help a friend caught sleeping in class, to giving answers for homework in pretty much any class. Technology is very helpful for the quick exchange of ideas, meaning when people writing "notes" and sending answers when asked in class. Sure it's small and doesn't really affect tests, but it could impede actual learning, and in that way make test scores worse. Well, actually, after a generous smart kid takes a test and perhaps writes the answers on his arm, he could simply type it up and send a mass E-mail to a group of peers. Possibly making money no the deal.

Then, there is the porn issue. I see your "oh but there are blocks and firewalls" remark coming, so I'll answer in advance. personal laptops will give free reign over many things in the system, and probably wont even be connected in any way to the school servers except for possible wifi installations. But that can be easily bypassed with a cellphone tower connection card.

It is true: "if a teenager wants to access something they are going to find anyway to get to it."

With the Internet we are becoming more resourceful, more knowledgeable, and more skilled in the areas we want. All it really takes is knowing what you want, a decent search ability, and then the time to practice, read, and watch any information on the subject. I don't know it to be true, but there have been claims of hacking into the school with but a PSP. An account I know to be true, is that of a script kitty breaking in with a thumb drive of programs.

A site that one could go to for these things is hackthissite.org its a site that promotes learning the skills on your own with logical thinking and gaining an intimate knowledge of computers and security. They will occasionally post their own small articles, or you can find tutorials on the forums for back doors, reverse engineering, and decryption.

It only takes one student to learn these skills and hand out the Key to many others.

If we are talking personal laptops, just having the word out that they are allowed will encourage students to invest in one of their own.

If the laptops are provided then why would the Wifi be locked? There would probably be some kind of wireless LAN set up that perhaps had some filters on it for certain words or other things. At least then they could control the unlocked wifi.

TAKE THAT

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FORFEIT???? |
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NOTE: My opponent as opted to copy and paste statements from another debate. Interestingly enough, these statements were provided by none other than someone who was opposing the resolution: http://www.debate.org...

Take a good look at lostabyss words in of that debate and tell me if the following paragraph doesn't sound familiar:

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QUOTE from Round 1: Laptops would make it incredibly easy to cheat on multiple things. From just being able to help a friend caguht sleeping in class, to giving answers for homework in pretty much any class. Technology is very helpful for the quick exchange of ideas, meaning when people writing "notes" and sending answers when asked in class. Sure it's small and doesn't really affect tests, but it could impede actual learning, and in that way make test scores worse. Well, actually, after a generous smart kid takes a test and perhaps writes the answers on his arm, he could simply type it up and send a mass E-mail to a group of peers. Possibly making money no the deal.

Then, there is the porn issue. i see your "oh but there are blocks and firewalls" remark coming, so i'll answer in advance. personal laptops will give free reign over many things in the system, and probably wont even be connected in any way to the school servers except for possible wifi installations. But that can be easily bypassed with a cellphone tower connection card."
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The character limit prevents me from pasting the rest, but I can assure you that a quick read will show that all my opponent has done is copy/paste from her previous debate; she pasted the argument provided by her opponent who opposed this resolution. I'm not sure what my opponent's goal here is, but this is certainly not the kind of conduct we need on debate.org. Thus, for GREAT JUSTICE, I ask that you at very least vote my opponent down both on convincing arguments (since she has essentially conceded to my argument) as well as for conduct (for forfeiting as well as merely pasting an argument from another debate that does nothing more than oppose her own) when voting.

Thanks for the debate (at least when this could have actually been considered a debate). Vote CON.