Since there are valid reasons against smartphone use in classrooms, we will champion its cousin, the tablet, in the article below, for educational applications among American youth. While there are obvious benefits the tablet has over smartphones (such as being easier to detect when used for purposes other than education), we will focus on the educational benefits themselves in this article, without the assumption that kids will be abusing this technology beyond its intended presence in the class.

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​Tablets Are More Versatile and Current Than Textbooks
Consider, for a moment, the limitations of the traditional, multi-paged textbook that can cost a small fortune to rent or purchase. The information contained within its spine, whether it be American history, chemistry, or French language lessons, is only as accurate as the day it came off the presses. In the past, this meant that for every update of a teacher’s lesson plan, to reflect more current and accurate information, hundreds of textbooks had to be ordered as well. This process repeats at a near-annual basis for educational institutions, but with tablets, this is no longer necessary. Up-to-date information can be accessed at one’s fingertips, which means instructors, teachers and professors can keep their lectures engaging and imbue their pupils with the most relevant information in their discipline.

Tablets Were Made for Collaboration
Think of the above hypothetical where a student’s smartphone was confiscated for texting a classmate. While the application has no place in the classroom, being able to communicate with a fellow student can have its merits, especially in the context of a collaborative assignment or class project. Resource links can be shared with far more ease through a tablet, and with online word processors like Google Docs, group tasks can be completed without the hassle or worry that one student won’t hold up their share of the responsibility. Better performance on these group tasks facilitates not only better marks on graded assignments, but prepares students for work in which tools like Google Docs become central to their day-to-day work.

Tablets Leave No One Behind, No Matter Their Needs
As mentioned above, textbooks are designed for the common denominator at a given point in time. They quickly become irrelevant or obsolete at the speed of news, and are typically written for a specific audience of students in mind — specifically, students that don’t have special needs or learning disabilities. The power of a tablet computer changes this, and the effects are most noticeable in the confines of small classrooms or 1-to-1 interactions with students. Thanks to technologies like the SmartEdPad, teachers can customize app functions and interfaces to meet the needs of individual children and students, meaning every young mind can have the opportunity to grow.

Tablets Prepare Students for A Tech-Centric Future
This article was written on a laptop. The people reading this are doing so with an Internet connection and a computer at home or on the go. To pretend that today’s children don’t need to have a fluent understanding of how these devices work is ignorant at best and deliberately harmful to the next generation’s futures at worst. Having children develop basic computing behaviors early, such as knowing how to compose an email, share a document and troubleshoot an app on a touchscreen, helps children get accustomed to use with technologies that will only become more common and critical to their place in society as time goes on.

However, there are certainly pros and cons to taking these classes from home. In terms of the pros, you can take several online courses from hundreds of accredited colleges right from the comfort of your home. These courses can be accelerated and take anywhere from 4 to 12 weeks. Upon successful completion of the course, you receive a certificate that you can flaunt on your resume or LinkedIn profile. You can also receive specialized certifications if you wish to narrow your focus within a discipline.

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There are also a few cons to taking these online courses. For instance, there is no graduation path that you can take. Because many of these websites don’t have a graduation program, there are not any prerequisites to the courses, meaning you can enter any level course at any time. If you want to take advanced biophysics at Harvard for your first course, then you certainly have the liberty to do that. The assessments are also extremely weak compared to standard collegiate assessments, so the certificates you receive do not hold the same weight in the job market that real college degrees do.

Coursera
If you are intrigued by the concept of online courses, then Coursera is certainly the website to check out. You can take classes at Stanford, Duke, University of Michigan, UC San Diego, Johns Hopkins University, Penn, and several more top colleges. The website has an extremely user-friendly search function, you can search by popularity in courses and specialization. You can also search the most popular courses within a discipline, such as Computer Science or Business.

Each course serves as a scholastic textbook, full with chapters and assessment chapters. You can also receive help and support from professors and fellow peers. After you complete the course, you will receive a certificate from Coursera that you can show off to your friends and employers.