How can we overcome the difficulties of 1-1 laptop classrooms?

At our English speaking club lesson I asked the club members to discuss the new 1-1 laptop way of teaching. After our discussion I asked them to write down their thoughts about this vital question. Here are their ideas.

Mariam Mirzoyan

 When we were just starting to use laptops instead of text-books and copybooks, I was really excited and expected a better education, but unfortunately there are some difficulties of studying in the 1-1 laptop classroom and sometimes it's even harder to study with laptops. I've noticed some students play games or visit some other web pages during the lessons and they forget about the lesson and play games or do other things. I totally understand them; it's hard to concentrate on the lesson when there are thousands of your favorite games in front of you. The students who play games at the lessons make other good students play games with them, so in the result of this there are moments when the whole class are playing games.

So what should we do? What should our teachers do with that? How can we overcome the difficulties in 1-1 laptop classroom? These are hard questions.

It's hard to make the whole class stop playing games or visit other social web-pages.

I think it'd be good if the web pages that students visit were blocked. After that, the learners will pay more attention to their lessons. ​

Susanna Avetisyan

Well, I think that everything which is new and progressive is difficult and so we should find the right answers to this problem. Our learners should understand that the laptops aren't only for games especially at the lesson. I think that in the future all the schools will have such laptop classes and everybody will start to learn using computers. Learners should be more concerned about their lessons. I think that if there are more examinations at our school, and if the teachers are stricter, the learners will start studying better. New technologies, new creative way of thinking, educational trips are very useful but at the same time students must have a wish to study. If the students don't have any wish to study, teachers can't do anything.

Yeva Markosyan and Anna Mkrtchyan

As we know notebook/netbooks are used in education in many countries. Most parents think it's not useful, but the device is very useful, if it is used in the right way. We think it depends on both the teacher and students. The teachers should organize lessons  which will interest their students, so that they wouldn't want to do other things. The students need to pay more attention, to be hardworking and interested in the lesson, join in all discussions, do all their hometasks; in one word they should be active. But to speak frankly we can't use laptops for all the school subjects. For example, we can use laptops at the English lessons to do different language exercises and watch films in English, or to get information for our History lessons but we don't need to use laptops during our maths lessons. We also think that the Internet access should be limited in the classroom because most learners are on the social sites during the lesson or they download computer games and enjoy playing. In conclusion, we would like to say that 1-1 laptop classrooms are useful but we should know how to organize our work.  

 Narek Danielyan

I am for note-book/net-book classes. I think that computers help learners with many things. For example, when they don't know some new words they can immediately look them up in the Google translator. During the lesson the sudents can do a test from the Internet and check the answer or they can find the necessary information for the project work. But on the other hand, there are students who play computer games during the lessons and it disturbs them. 

 Davit Shahinyan

My opinion is that computers sometimes help us and sometimes disturb us. Computers help us because we can search for everything we want. For example, when I want to search for some information about birds I can do it easily  and do my project. I don't have to look that information up in the encyclopaedia. Computers disturb us because when the teacher is speaking, we are not listening to him; we are chatting with our friends or playing computer games.