Name: Seowon Jung
Class: ESL100
Date: 5/11/2008

The world has changed. In the past, people studied at school with only pen and paper to prepare them to work in places like factories. These days, there are a lot of digital devices in the world and everybody has one of them, even children. Children have access to the internet and can search for any information they need. In the digital world, they have lost interest in study, homework, and social activities. Therefore, now teachers need to change their teaching style.

The videos advise teachers to try to use digital devices in order to make studying interesting for their students. The video tried to convince some old hat teachers that a lot of children use google and youtube at home. Children might be already learning what teachers don’t teach at school. Therefore, some children would think that homework is unuseful or useful in the far future. However, as teachers can engage their students with digital devices, it could make study interesting not only at school but also at home. In addition to, it can produce good results like reducing the dropping out rate.

However, children of low-income families, who don’t have computers nor any digital devices, can join those who have digital devices? Children from low- income families might not attend school to avoid showing that they are kind of poor people with open doors. On this point, a gap occurs between rich and poor children. Poor children don’t have computers at home so, they don’t know how to surf the web and search for information they need. Obviously, they avoid studying more and more, and they drop out from school. In the past, society was divided into three groups: king, nobilities and common people. These days, devices have divided children into two parts haves and have-nots and eventually, it results in the increase of the dropout rate before graduation.

Some school like Kansas high school has tried to reduce a gap between rich and poor students through free laptop program. I strongly agree that this program can bring very positive effect and reduce the dropout rate but, this program is not a complete solution. Someone has to spend a lot of money, which the government has been doing. However, what if the government buys an iPod for every poor children? Is it a perfect solution? Absolutely not. Because, nobody knows who is poor or not. Moreover, even the base line of poorness is neither one thing nor the other.

In conclusion, digital devices have helped to increase the dropout rate of students. I think it’s not household matters and, moreover, one person can not solve this problem. Therefore, the government nationally needs to try to solve this problem. For example, the government buys digital devices at lower prices then, they can give it to poor children, who are honor students, as a scholarship. Through this program, I believe that the student will compete and be stimulated by how many points they have to earn to get digital devices. Furthermore, this kind of scholarship has to be awarded to eligible students who must be poor children.