Technology is a part of everyday life and most students in the millennial generation don’t remember a time without cell phones or the Internet. Most of us have smart phones and smart TVs. We get our news from Twitter and we communicate by text. Times have changed. Paper is now a touchable screen. A pen has become your finger or a stylus. Does that mean pen and paper have lost their appeal?

Every SPA student is issued a computer in the Middle School and another in the Upper School. Many homework assignments are turned in through OneNote or Google Drive and we communicate with teachers through Veracross. Technology in the classroom has become common practice and a daily occurrence.

Computers give students a way to research for papers and homework. Students can pull up old assignments and access their textbooks online. But social media and the Internet can also cause computers to become a distraction. Many students have them on most of the day and use it for things other than schoolwork. With the vast world of the Internet only a few clicks away, it becomes difficult to stay on the task at hand. Any time one is open a student can get away from their school work with only the few clicks, convincing themselves the distraction will only take a second, but get swept into the web. “People are on Facebook, that’s the big one, Facebook and Twitter. People also play games, watch sports highlights, reading articles. A lot of guys look at fantasy team stuff, but when a teacher says about a topic ‘this is going to be important’ everyone takes notes,” junior Kit Rasmussen said.

All of us are guilty of wasting time on the Internet but even if we are able to control our temptations, would using technology for something as simple as note taking best be done on our computers, or the old-fashioned way with a paper and pencil so the teacher can keep us on task?

It would be easy to assume that technology would enhance our note taking ability. Not so, according to a recent study by journal Psychological Science; it has shown that taking notes with pen and paper has shown to boost memory and the ability to remember and apply the concepts.

No one is proposing massive shifts, just a very simple change to keep people away from distractions. “If [teachers] change [computer policy] they should do what the chemistry teachers do, which is make the kids go into tablet form while taking notes. Believe me, its much harder to do something unproductive in tablet form,” Rasmussen said. When the handbook states that the computer is suppose to be used as a tool for someone to help their progress in school and this is not happening, then there is a problem.