Tablets Are Efficient And Lightweight
2341 WordsMay 4, 201510 Pages
20 years ago, many families had basic cable TV’s and computers the size of a desk in an elementary classroom. As the years passed, computers got smaller and smaller and finally reached the size where they could fit into a small backpack. Because of that, and because of the recent push to turn the world into a greener, more environmentally clean planet, public schools throughout America decided to kick textbooks to the curb in order to cut printing to save trees and to cut the costs that come along with putting the books together and distributing them. These same schools across the nation have taken the technological plunge and have begun to replace textbooks in K-12 schools with their electronic equivalent, tablets and e-books. Among these…show more content… Benjamin Herold, a staff writer for Education Week puts in his two cents about health concerns when it comes to using tablets in a Guilford County, North Carolina school. The school in question decided to “[suspend] the use of tablets and related equipment” because of “broken screens…and there were also reported problems with some device cases and overheating battery chargers” (12). In other words, safety hazards became evident when screens broke risking cut fingers and hands, when cases didn’t protect the tablets leading to the same injuries, and when battery chargers began to overheat while plugged into the tablet, jeopardizing the safety of not only the students, but others as well with the risk of starting a fire. Kristin Zachary, a reporter for High Point Enterprise in North Carolina speaks along the same lines about broken screens potentially becoming a health hazard. Zachary reveals that out of “about 19,000 devices that were in the hands of students and teachers…435 tablets [were] broken” within about two months of using them at a school in Guilford County, North Carolina. Zachary is basically reiterating that those same broken screens can lead to issues like screens shorting out and becoming a shock hazard, and could also lead to the students cutting their fingers and hands on the screens. In collaboration with ProCon.org, the writers at PR Newswire even chipped in and added their insight on the