To share a research conversation with our partner classroom, I wanted to use something I experienced inside Mr. Simms class that I never saw when I was going through K-12–the use of laptops regularly inside of the class. The students were able to use their laptops freely inside of the classroom environment to aid in their learning and their ability to provide information to the discussion between the class members and Mr. Simms. This allowed more people to be able to talk about a subject that, in my classes, kept people from speaking for fear of getting the wrong answer or being called out for knowing something that the others did not.

In her article Payne notes that, “The average score, looking at students’ multiple-choice and short-answer scores, was roughly 71.7 percent, with a standard deviation of 9.2 percentage points. Students in classrooms without Internet-connected devices earned the highest average score of 72.9 percent. Students in classrooms where laptop and tablet usage was not restricted earned the lowest scores, on average, at 70.5 percent, a difference of 2.4 percentage points. Students in classrooms where only tablets were allowed under strict conditions did slightly better, with an average score of 71.4 percent, but they still had lower scores than students in the technology-free group” (Carter). This shows how the laptops in the classroom do not decrease the average score by a margin large enough to deem them as being bad to the learning environment. This is also shown in the same article with the statement, ” Instructor controls are important, as we want to eliminate any differences from instructors who are better or worse at delivering the material. Class-hour controls account for whether students perform differently at different hours of the day, such as before or after lunch. Semester controls ensure that differences are not driven by slight variations in the course between the two semesters” (Carter). Even though the laptops have a lower score than no technology, this is accounted for with the way that the teacher controls the class, which is everything to the student for their learning capability.

CARTER, SUSAN PAYNE, et al. “Should Professors Ban Laptops? How Classroom Computer Use Affects Student Learning.” Education Next, vol. 17, no. 4, Fall 2017, pp. 68–74. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=125076083&site=ehost-live&scope=site.