Chromebooks are the new paper in Bedford. Recently Bedford Middle School has applied a new phone policy which strengthened the old school phone policy. This requires the use of more appliances on the Chromebook rather than on a phone.

The Chromebook use in schools has been going off the charts in recent years. 60 percent of all U.S. education shipments in 2017 were Chromebooks.

Are the Chromebooks overused? Was it better when it was just a pencil and paper?
According to 20 Bedford students, yes. Thirteen out of 20 students said that they think teachers rely on Chromebooks too much for schoolwork, and they seem to dislike Chromebooks even more when compared to a pencil and paper.

An astounding 27 out of 46 students said that they would rather take a test on paper than on a Chromebook. Anna Ji, a 7th Grade Blue Pod student, thought that taking tests on Chromebooks was uncivilized. “When you take a test on Chromebooks, students can search up answers,” says Ji. “It’s cheating and not civilized. “ Students can not only search up answers to a test but also things like Grammarly and SparkNotes are online to help with assignments like essays.Also, parents are already limiting screen time at home, but what most don’t know is that students are getting a lot more screen time during the day from

Chromebooks. It’s really not any different than using your phone, and not only that, kids use them in school all the time. 8th graders have unlimited use of a computer that they can not only do schoolwork on, but also play games and look at social media. It’s like having an extra phone that you bring into school (and the new phone policy was just established).

Also, new generations are growing up completely dependent on technology. Children would learn about cursive and readable handwriting for hand-written essays, while today we learn to type in elementary school and most assignments can be found and done online. This isn’t good because notes are usually handwritten, and tons of studies have shown that writing on paper helps increase you remembering things, while typing is just putting your fingers on the letters you hear.

All in all, the dependency of technology has been the highest in school than it has ever been.
Students have been clearly using more technology in school than ever before. The Chromebook use has gone up and paper and pencil are now in the books.
Technology does make life easier, but is there a certain limit, or should students keep using and increasing the use of technology?