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Friday, November 24, 2017
Sales Pitch
In this exercise, you'll practice deliberative rhetoric. You should try and (a) persuade the audience to buy your item by offering its advantages, or (b) dissuade them from buying it by detailing its disadvantages. Your audience is the ECCSS Schoolboard, your item is the iPad. Half of you should persuade the school board to invest in a 1:1 ratio for the high school, the other half should discourage the board from making the investment. DO YOUR RESEARCH!!!! You must have evidence to persuade or discourage the purchase of the iPads. You all have some experience with the iPads, but in regards to cost and statistics, get your numbers right. Also, be sure to establish your authority (ethos), appeal to the audience's emotions (pathos) and also appeal to your audience's sense of logic (logos). As always, this is first come first serve. Half of the class must persuade, half must discourage.
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Technology is the inevitable future. This phrase, or some version of it, is one that all can attest to hearing before. The rapid technological advancements made within the past few years have revolutionized our society. Schools, for most of their history, have adapted to the usage of various technologies dependent on their era. It has always been the duty of a school to best prepare students for whatever society they may be entering into with the best tools available to them. Ladies and Gentlemen of the school board, then could it be argued that in order for a school to properly prepare students, they must be well versed in technological handlings? By this right, Elk County Catholic High School must have a responsibility to society to utilize the technology available to it—and that includes iPads. The iPads used by the students and faculty have proven themselves useful since their introduction to the classrooms. The iPads have become a staple to the students of our school, necessary for a variety of purposes. Consider for a moment just how much the modern learning experience has been revolutionized by their introduction and what it would be like to remove them. Each student and teacher currently has an email as a means of correspondence, but that communicative link would be lost without the immediacy of the iPads. Papers can be assigned, written, and turned in in and outside of class, but that would be made significantly more difficult without the iPads. Facts can be checked, research can be done, and assistance can be provided in the classroom by the iPads. The iPads have also proven an asset for a few families. Many make sacrifices to send their students to our school. Some families lack the financial stability to own a personal computer or internet access due to their decision to send their children to ECC, but these tools can be used at school and home to better conditions for students in those situations. Now the question being raised is sure to have something to do with the costliness of the iPads. The current cost of the most recent iPad, the iPad 9.7, is set at $329. If the student and the school were to split the price in a 1:1 ratio however, the price for each party would only be $164.50. This is, of course, without any sort of application for a grant, which can be used to decrease the price of such an item meant for classroom usage. Simply put, as a matter of efficiency both in the classroom and in the ultimate transition from it, the iPads have been proven to be an indispensable tool.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed how you included how IPads make communication with others and teachers much easier.
DeleteI feel like removing the iPads from the school system as a whole will subtly make the students rely more on themselves than the internet.
DeleteNick, I appreciate what you had to say.
DeleteNolan, I do understand where you are coming from, but what exactly would you say the point of the educational system is? Is it to have students learn facts only to forget them, or is it to teach a student the ‘how’ and the ‘why’? The internet is a valuable tool, that can be used to aid students in finding the answers to these questions. They are but another means for education, and while I understand the desire for self reliance, I do not believe it is in this instance exactly practical.
Our world is forever changing. Technology continues to bring many of those changes to us. With the evolving technological advances, our education also changes to go along with these advances. So therefore, isn't it only logical to continue the 1:1 iPad to student ratio? There are many pros to having a personal iPad, both obvious and indirect. With an iPad, students don't have to depend on others to help them get work done. They have all their documents right in front of them and with them all the time. This way assignments can be worked on at any time their iPad is with them and charged. While being individual, it also helps bring groups in group projects together. With the new collaboration feature in many apps, groups don't need to worry about everyone being together at once. Everyone can work on the assignment together at the same time, and they don't even need to be together. Assignments can also be given to students at any time, with a greater communication line created because of students having this with them almost all the time. With all these advantages, some may argue that iPads create a distraction with the chance of students playing games. I say, this variable teaches students time management and responsibility. Students have to learn how to control themselves and get their work done, especially because they won't have someone restricted their every move in the real world. Some may also argue price. While the large sum of $329 for the newest iPad may seem crazy, when you really calculate it it isn't as bad. When the price is split and divided, it comes to a more manageable $165. With all of these advantages, the money seems like a small price to pay for a great improvement to our education.
ReplyDeleteI was on the cons side of IPads but your blog does a really good job stating the goods that they could bring.
DeleteI agree with you that many kids could learn time management from these iPads but many also won’t so I do not think it is worth it.
DeleteNick, I understand that but I find that part of he issue is that teachers don't properly discipline stundents for improper iPad usage. This makes us as students feel like we can get away with whatever we want to.
DeleteDo you want your kids to learn or have an IPad learn for them? There would be many disadvantages for students if they were to have IPads. Your history teachers asks the question, “who is the first president?” Many kids could look the fact up in the book and probably remember it or they could just look up the question directly on the IPad and find the answer. By doing this they would obtain nothing out of it. IPads will create the issue of making school to easy in a sense because kids can just look up answers when they please. IPads will also give many kids the opportunity to cheat more often. We do not want our students developing these bad habits that they could possibly leave high school with. IPads contain many different apps from social media to war games. Many kids will not hesitate to grab this striking opportunity to play call of duty rather than listen to a boring math class. This is why IPads should not be invested in for our school. The cost for an IPad right now is $329! Although the school is only asking for half to be payed for who wants to pay that outrageous price for something that is not even necessary. With the disadvantages that could arise such as cheating, video games, making the student learn less, and an outrageous price IPads do not sound like an efficient investment for the program.
ReplyDeleteI disagree I think that the iPad is a good learning tool if used properly. Yes it can be abused but if it is used correctly a student go above and beyond with their education.
DeleteI understand your reasoning in saying students can't be trusted. But isn't that part of the point? Giving the students this choice gives them a sense of responsibility they have to learn. If it's watched correctly students wouldn't be able to get away with games.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteWhile I can acknowledge each of the points you made, I cannot necessarily agree with your support behind them. Is it really that difficult for students to maintain restraint? I really don’t think it is. These devices are, in a sense, an exercise of trust. Yes, kids don’t always do what they are supposed to do, but would that change if the iPads were removed? Most of us found something to entertain ourselves with at some point in our schooling career that had nothing to do with class. I guess what I am trying to say is that the distractions we face and keep in check have less to do with the iPads and more to do with the responsibility of the students.
DeleteShannon,it is a good learning tool and it can be used for good but they are abused way to often.
DeleteMadison, you are right but it is very hard to monitor them for example with the vpn apps.
Anna, I agree with you but I do not think it is necessary to buy something if this cost for every student to exercise trust and responsibility.
In this day in age you would think that there would be a computer in every home, that a student no matter where they go to high school would be able to go home and use their family computer to research and write a paper. This however is not the case. Ladies and gentlemen of the school board this problem could be solved by supplying each student attending Elk County Catholic. With these iPads teachers would be able to contact students at anytime or anywhere to get them their work when they miss a day of school. Every student is issued an email when they enroll at ECC and this along with the iPads allows constant communication between teachers and students in order to receive the best possible education. Classes can become more interactive with the iPad and teachers can get their students more involved and more interested in lessons. Now I know iPads are expensive in fact the newest iPad on the market is starting out at $329. However when you think about it with a 1:1 ratio the cost would be around $164.50. I ask you to think about allowing the school to purchase iPads for student and faculty use, it would be a great addition to our academic atmosphere.
ReplyDeleteI disagree that it would be a great addition to our academic atmosphere. I believe that students should make relying on themselves a habit. In the future, this will be useful for them because they will be better at relying on themselves and figuring things out than having a tool to practically do it for you.
DeleteI see where you’re coming from but when you think about it we will always be able to look up information. Yes we need to learn important facts by ourselves but we all have phones and are able to look this up at anytime. With this in mind how would having tools like iPads hinder our educations?
DeleteI completely agree with you that with the ipads help communication but almost everyone has a computer with email so why use this money that could be put towards a better cause to the school for IPads?
DeleteSchool is supposed to be a place to learn and grow. The use of iPads in our school system has greatly impacted the learning ability at our school very negatively. When you walk into one of our classrooms, you won’t see a group of students talking or working with each other. You will probably see a group of boys huddled in the back of the room playing on their iPads, some girls in the middle gossiping while typing on there screens, and a very small group of people I The from t of the classroom doing school work. There are no real statistics that prove iPads do anything for learning in our classrooms. We rarely ever use them in our classrooms for anything beneficial. The only thing that these iPads are doing besides distracting us is putting, you, the school board in debt.
ReplyDeleteI see your point, but I feel like students just need to learn how to use them correctly. If teachers actually disciplined students for playing games or texting they could be more efficiently used for work.
DeleteI understand what you mean when you talk about the students who spend their time on games rather than their work, but in comparison to the good they have done is it fair to say that they are a poor investment. Furthermore, do we know whether or not the iPads put the school board in debt? If they did, would they even continue to invest in them?
DeleteMadison, the fact of the matter is, is that the teachers will not discipline the students. They themselves are ill informed of the policies and refuse to act upon the rules.
DeleteAnna, I think that if the school board is not in debt your They soon will be.
Having iPads as a tool for every student in our school is very helpful, but I believe if we didn’t have them that we would be doing just as good as we are now, or even better. The prices of the iPads only could be enough to completely disband them from what ECCHS spends their money on. The average price of an iPad Air 2 is $599.99 and the average class at ECC has 17 students. For one class to all have iPads, ECC would have spent $10,199.83. The high school alone has around 200 students, which means that the school would have spent around $119,998 for them. This extra $100,000 could be spent on athletics, more advanced and useful equipment in the classroom, or more programs/options for the students. Half of battery usage on an iPad consists of video streaming or games, and the other half usually consists of web browsing. These stats don’t change much for a student during the school day. You could ask any student what the most used app on their iPad is and most of the time it will be anything but the apps the school pre-paid for, for us to use, such as pages, keynote, or iMovie. The fact that most students rarely use their iPad for educational purposes should also direct the school board to reconsider their choice. Would you rather have students iMessaging and playing games during school when they could be working on a project or have students only focus be on doing school work?
ReplyDelete