Laptops/Ipads should not replace notebooks and textbooks in school

I wish him good luck for the upcoming rounds in this debate. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________-And with that said I will directly skip to my contentions for the case. Laptops are lighterIt’s an obvious fact that laptops are much lighter than a bunch of textbooks and notebooks. Children from their initial stages of education are forced to carry a heavy load of textbooks and notebooks. Carrying such heavy load on their shoulders damages the spinal cord over time and in extreme cases may lead to severe physical deformities in children. [1]Growing numbers of children are developing irreversible back deformities because of the weight of the bags they carry to school. Half of all children suffer back pain by the age of 14 and doctors are reporting a rise in cases of spinal abnormalities in pupils, including disfiguring curvatures known as scoliosis. Overloaded school bags that are up to double the size of those carried ten years ago are contributing to this surge. Health experts say children risk long-term and ultimately permanent damage if they regularly carry more than 15 percent of their body weight over their shoulders. The charity BackCare claims many youngsters are carrying as much as 20 per cent of their weight to and from school, and some up to 25 per cent. If children are getting back problems so young then there is the potential they will have it for the next 70 to 80 years, which leads to an enormous physical and emotional cost [1]All the notebooks and textbooks required for various subjects that a student is supposed to carry can easily be replaced by a single laptop thus avoiding any of the above mentioned problems. It is Eco-FriendlyAnnually 30 million trees are cut in the U. S alone to make books. Most of these trees that are cut down come from un-farmed sources. Globally, 70 per cent of the 335 million tons of paper the world uses each year comes from natural, un-farmed sources. In Canada, the UK's biggest source of pulp, 90 per cent of its output comes directly from its ancient forests. When trees are cut down in such a manner, not only do we lose them but in addition we disturb the fragile balance in the eco-system that had existed between the trees and other living organisms that had habituated in and around the area of these trees. We are in an age where most of our natural flora and fauna are already being wiped out to accommodate the growing population, at this stage we simply cannot afford to bring down more trees for the sake of paper used in notebooks and textbooks when a more feasible alternative is available. VersatilityTextbooks get outdated quickly and schools have to dig out more cash to purchase up-to-date textbooks. With laptops, textbook publishers and teachers would be able to edit and update the information more easily on electronic copies of text. Teachers now would be able to select certain pages of workbooks to use online, instead of buying whole textbooks that in most cases we barely use half of. Up to date information would easily be at our disposal in a click of a button at practically no charge at all. It is also easier and faster to search up knowledge on laptops unlike in textbooks where you would have to spend a lot of your time and energy to dig up the correct information you were looking for. Moreover, having a single laptop is far more convenient compared to having multiple notebooks and binders. If students do all their homework assignments on the laptop, then there will be no more “I forgot it at home” excuses, unless they forget to bring their laptop and why would they forget to bring it if it was one of the only things they were required to bring? [2]No Prejudice based on handwritingDifferent people have different handwritings and some are good while some not. Research has shown that different handwriting styles have an effect on how a paper is graded and the marks a student receives. [3] From a teacher's perspective, poor handwriting may reflect to them as a lack of interest or understanding. Whether they realize it or not, teachers evaluating or judging papers with bad handwriting tend to get frustrated and biased. Laptops remove all such problems and students will now be judged for the content and matter they present and not on their style of writing. Laptops are cooler than textbooks and notebooksEven though something being cool is subjective it is unarguable that laptops are more fashionable and stylish than any textbook or notebook can ever be. No normal student would disagree that he would rather be found with a laptop than a bunch of textbooks. Laptops can be used in the darkThough this necessarily isn’t a strong pragmatic argument it is still an added advantage of laptops over textbooks and notebooks. There are numerous free softwares available in the internet that can enable you to reduce the brightness of your computer screen beyond what is possible by its hardware. Nelson PIRES screen dimmer : . http://www.nelsonpires.com...Pangolin screen Brightness: . http://www.pangobright.com... This argument confutes CON’s assertion about laptops causing eye strains and uncomfortabilities. The brightness of laptops could be reduced to such scales that they practically emit no extra brightness at all. Rebuttals:Here I will be addressing to the assertions made by CON that were unrefuted in my main arguments. (note: I have indicated CON's statements by using italics and underlining them)who said they wouldn't be playing when in class as wellThere are a plethora of free softwares available for both ipads and laptops that limit and monitor the activities a user performs. With these softwares it would be a cakewalk for the school authorities to prevent students from playing in class. PeekTab Tablet Monitoring Software: . http://www.peektab.com...Windows Server Monitoring Tool : . http://www.manageengine.com...Ipads and laptops are a lot more expensive than ordinary textbooksYes this is so. But the expense is only one time unlike notebooks and textbooks where you have to replace them annually. With that said, the expenditure involved in buying notebooks and textbooks for the whole of a student’s education will more than likely be balanced out with the onetime expense involved in buying a basic laptop and furthermore, with all the added advantages that laptops bring that I have mentioned in my arguments even if it doesn’t balance out it is definitely worth the extra sum involved. Addendum:Now that my main arguments have been covered I’ll now move on to firmly establish why laptops can and should replace notebooks and textbooks by showing a real life example where this was actually done. The school district of Huntsville, Alabama has recently implemented laptops and iPads into their teaching. They installed a multitude of security measures to protect the laptops from malware and a filter so students will not be able to peruse Facebook or play Minecraft during school hours. To prevent laptops from being stolen, they installed computrace to trace the laptops in case of theft. Students paid a usage fee of thirty-five dollars which is less than ten-percent of the full price for a laptop. At the end of the school year, only two computers were lost and none were stolen. [2]This without any doubt goes to prove that laptops/ipads can successfully replace notebooks and text booksSources:1: . http://www.scmp.com...2: . http://dublin.patch.com...3: . http://www.ehow.com....