Hey you! Yeah, you, what are you reading this on? If you answered a Chromebook congrats! You’re part of the majority of our readers. But why are you reading this on a Chromebook, why did the district decide to give us these tools? Well stick around and I, Leo Toole will tell you the pros and cons of your Chromebook.

First up, Chromebooks are great, for many reasons. One reason is that studies have shown kids that use Chromebooks are more motivated to learn and have increased student engagement. It also opens up many educational programs such as IXL, CommonLit, Wordle (another NYT games) and NoRedInk. It also opens up quizzing programs like Blooket, Kahoot, Gimkit and Quizizz. You also don’t have to worry about forgetting your homework because it is on your computer.

But, every good thing comes with a price. One of the BIG cons is that kids are constantly trying to find unblocked websites so the district has to block a ton of websites which means some useful websites get blocked for no reason, if you want to learn more about blocked websites go to Sherlynn Zheng’s article “Blocked Websites & the Problems of It” on this very website.

5th grader Ben Cohen says “so, I think that students should not go on gaming websites unless they have finished all of their work and have permission from their teacher, I think if students are watching educational things on youtube it’s ok but not inappropriate or things with no educational value”. Kids focus also decreases and teachers have to constantly remind students to get off their Chromebooks.

So, answer this question “Chromebooks or Paper Books?” in the poll here.