An increasing number of schools provide tablets and laptop computers for students to use in school, replacing books and other printed materials like exams and assignments. What are the advantages and disadvantages of this trend?

These days, a growing number of schools use electronic devices as a substitute for books and printed materials like exams and assignments. Although I agree using technology in educational institutions has several advantages, there are a lot of cons associated as well. This essay will discuss this trend using examples to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of this trend. Admittedly, there are some advantages of using mobile electronic devices. Firstly, having such tools greatly enriches the learning experience for the student. Some students like sharing course reading material or collaborating on assignments. Not only such activities are made easier but also possible to do with any similar-grade student around the globe. Furthermore, the growth of educational technology start-ups such as Khan Academy, Coursera to name a few, has fuelled such activities more. Another specific advantage is that through the usage of electronic books, potentially less harm is caused to the environment as no paper is used. In addition, less habitable space is consumed with the ability of electronic devices to store millions of books nowadays. Despite the several advantages above, I think the main disadvantage is the inappropriate misuse of these technologies. For example, cheating in exams and assignments has been made much easier and there has been an increased in cases of plagiarism. In other words, although with great power comes greater responsibility, however, students using unethical practices have increased over the years. Another obvious drawback is that focusing on reading books via laptop or tablets is difficult given the number of distractions in form of social media applications, electronic games to name a few. In conclusion, there are both positive as well as negative sides of replacing books and printed materials via modern technology devices. To outrightly reject the role of these devices in education given disadvantages is difficult and sometimes impossible to move forward, especially how ingrained these tools have become in our daily lives. Personally, I think via proper implementation of controls for the prevention of disadvantages, one can move forward and embrace this trend.