Need. Want. One is a four letter word and the other is a necessity.
Listen up and heed this old man’s words as I get you set to go back to
school, do some real learning, and save thousands of dollars by not
buying into this computer fad. Look at me! I got an iPhone! Look at
me! I can film my lectures! Look at me! I made a spreadsheet that does
my arithmetic for me!
Poppycock, I say. When I was your age, not only was I the same age as you, but the most advance technology we had in school was the ball-point pen! I did just fine. Teachers had to write words on a board and you had to copy them down and make notes before she wiped them off. That’s what learning is about. You don’t need no fiddly gadgets.
Don’t believe me? Do some studying of Tina Sieber’s, Thou Shalt Consume: The Story of Consumer Electronics. You’re getting played, son!
Alright, I got the grumpy old man bit out. I’m a better now and I’ll try to make legitimate arguments why you don’t need these five pieces of technology that you might think you need. Yes, a big part of that argument will be showing you that even though you may want it, even though it may ‘make life easier’ you don’t really need it. You’ll survive. You may even do better in your studies immediately and in the long run. I know you’ll go and get these gizmos anyway, but just in case they break down, you’ll know that you didn’t need them in the first place.
Smartphones, by their very nature, are distracting pieces of equipment. I dare say few people have the self-discipline to use it only when necessary. According to HackCollege.com, “88 per cent of students texted in class” while only “40 percent used smartphones to study before a tess”. Students aren’t really using these things to learn with, so what is the need?
By the same research, 75% of students have their smartphone bills paid by their parents, and the other 25% pay their own bills. Either way, that could be as much as $100 a month diverted from actually paying for their education. Money wasted since it doesn’t help them and potentially puts them deeper in debt.
Also note that 25% of students have sexted. In many countries, the majority of freshmen are underage. That means that at least some of them are participating in child porn, if not just behaviours that could come back to haunt them after graduation. Why have that temptation there?
If you need to make a phone call, most dorms have payphones and many also are wired for land-lines. If that’s not an option, there is probably a payphone somewhere on campus. If you need to get ahold of someone on campus, you could actually walk over to their office or room and talk with them.
If you think you need a smartphone to view online materials, again, there are options. There are computer labs that you can use or maybe your roommate or floor-mates have computers as well. In a worst-case scenario, you might even ask your professor or their assistant if you can watch it on their computer. They won’t deny you.
The Globe and Mail features a report that shows some interesting numbers. You might not be surprised to read that students using laptops in class experienced an 11 percent point drop in their marks. You may be very surprised that students sitting around the student with the laptop – innocent bystanders – had a 17 percentage point drop in their marks. I don’t know about you, but that would have meant a fail for me in a fair number of courses. It’s just another distraction from the task at hand.
If you are hellbent on getting a laptop, do study Kannon Yamada’s, Going Back To School? Save Money On A New Computer With 7 Secret Tips. At least save a few bucks!
You might recall reading somewhere about the effect that repetition and review has on retention of newly learned material. The general idea is that simply writing notes down increases the likelihood that you’ll remember something. Reviewing those notes in the same day has an almost exponential effect on the retention of that material. What I propose is that you write your notes down, with pen or pencil, then when you get time to access a computer lab, type your notes out. That will save you the cost of a laptop and certainly enhance your ability to recall material come exam time. I knew a lady in college that did this everyday and her marks were extraordinary. By her own telling, she just wasn’t able to learn much on the fly, so she developed the discipline to do this. It worked.
As for the ability to do online research, you simply need access to a computer and we’ve gone over the fact that most schools have computer labs and computers in the libraries. Accessing them used to be difficult, but now because so many people have laptops and such, many of these computers sit dormant.
Doing research on a tablet is also just an extension of your desire not to go to the library. Go to the library. Learn how to use a book for research. Touch the history and the permanence of knowledge with your hands. One of the most awe-inspiring moments of my education was going into the special collections and reading books from the Middle Ages. To touch real vellum imparts a knowledge you can’t get from simply reading the text on a screen. To see that each word was painstakingly hand-written gives importance to the knowledge recorded therein. That book may have been the only book that someone saw in their entire life! You can’t get that wisdom by downloading a book from the web. Does Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales really deserve a place next to Jetpack Joyride? No, no it doesn’t. But if you do deem it necessary, try to save some money by reading Ryan Dube’s, Apple Offers Back-To-School Gift Cards For Product Purchases piece. It could get you a $50 Apple gift card.
There was a time where the only tool many people had for advanced math was a slide-rule. Engineers built marvels based on calculations done with these devices. Mind you, the calculations took a little longer than with a calculator. Yet it is that time that allowed for the entrenchment of formulas and principles in the minds of students. They didn’t need to do 100 math problems in 20 minutes. They did maybe 20 in a 100 minutes, and they learned the math forever.
You only need it because everyone else had one since the late 1980′s. But I urge you to get one with only the functions that you really need. If you’re an English major and you have a Statistics class, you don’t need a $200 calculator that can graph the trajectory of a missile – or draw a cat.
Just get the $10 one. If you are a science student, try to do at least a couple problems all on paper. Then you’ll know that you won’t be useless if you are stuck in a situation without a calculator.
Have you tried, maybe, leaving your dorm room? There is a gym! There are many amazing cultural activities on campus, most of them free! Get out of the house now that you don’t live at home. Expose yourself to new activities and cultures. It is often this aspect of higher education that will set you apart from the rest of the degree drones when you hit adulthood. You’ll make friends that you don’t just message on Facebook. These will become the people that form your peer group as you embark on taking on the world.
Just leave the console at home. Someone in your building will bring a few anyway and they’ll need you to kill the next boss. Or maybe have your floor chip in and get one for the common room. Then everyone is responsible for taking care of it. Just a thought.
Poppycock, I say. When I was your age, not only was I the same age as you, but the most advance technology we had in school was the ball-point pen! I did just fine. Teachers had to write words on a board and you had to copy them down and make notes before she wiped them off. That’s what learning is about. You don’t need no fiddly gadgets.
Don’t believe me? Do some studying of Tina Sieber’s, Thou Shalt Consume: The Story of Consumer Electronics. You’re getting played, son!
Alright, I got the grumpy old man bit out. I’m a better now and I’ll try to make legitimate arguments why you don’t need these five pieces of technology that you might think you need. Yes, a big part of that argument will be showing you that even though you may want it, even though it may ‘make life easier’ you don’t really need it. You’ll survive. You may even do better in your studies immediately and in the long run. I know you’ll go and get these gizmos anyway, but just in case they break down, you’ll know that you didn’t need them in the first place.
Smartphones – $20-$100/month
First off, phones are not smart. They just do a lot of things that phones never used to do. Have you ever seen a One-Man-Band? He can play a lot of instruments at once, not very well, and he probably doesn’t have an advanced degree. Perhaps if he seriously studied one instrument, he might have mastered it, learned music theory and then went on to enjoy an illustrious career in a world-class orchestra. Now let me make sense of that laboured metaphor.Smartphones, by their very nature, are distracting pieces of equipment. I dare say few people have the self-discipline to use it only when necessary. According to HackCollege.com, “88 per cent of students texted in class” while only “40 percent used smartphones to study before a tess”. Students aren’t really using these things to learn with, so what is the need?
By the same research, 75% of students have their smartphone bills paid by their parents, and the other 25% pay their own bills. Either way, that could be as much as $100 a month diverted from actually paying for their education. Money wasted since it doesn’t help them and potentially puts them deeper in debt.
Also note that 25% of students have sexted. In many countries, the majority of freshmen are underage. That means that at least some of them are participating in child porn, if not just behaviours that could come back to haunt them after graduation. Why have that temptation there?
If you need to make a phone call, most dorms have payphones and many also are wired for land-lines. If that’s not an option, there is probably a payphone somewhere on campus. If you need to get ahold of someone on campus, you could actually walk over to their office or room and talk with them.
If you think you need a smartphone to view online materials, again, there are options. There are computer labs that you can use or maybe your roommate or floor-mates have computers as well. In a worst-case scenario, you might even ask your professor or their assistant if you can watch it on their computer. They won’t deny you.
Laptops – $300-$2000
Having the convenience of being able to type your notes in-class, and do online research anywhere seems to be a solid justification for needing the laptop. The laptop, like the rest of these gadgets, is still mostly just a want.The Globe and Mail features a report that shows some interesting numbers. You might not be surprised to read that students using laptops in class experienced an 11 percent point drop in their marks. You may be very surprised that students sitting around the student with the laptop – innocent bystanders – had a 17 percentage point drop in their marks. I don’t know about you, but that would have meant a fail for me in a fair number of courses. It’s just another distraction from the task at hand.
If you are hellbent on getting a laptop, do study Kannon Yamada’s, Going Back To School? Save Money On A New Computer With 7 Secret Tips. At least save a few bucks!
You might recall reading somewhere about the effect that repetition and review has on retention of newly learned material. The general idea is that simply writing notes down increases the likelihood that you’ll remember something. Reviewing those notes in the same day has an almost exponential effect on the retention of that material. What I propose is that you write your notes down, with pen or pencil, then when you get time to access a computer lab, type your notes out. That will save you the cost of a laptop and certainly enhance your ability to recall material come exam time. I knew a lady in college that did this everyday and her marks were extraordinary. By her own telling, she just wasn’t able to learn much on the fly, so she developed the discipline to do this. It worked.
As for the ability to do online research, you simply need access to a computer and we’ve gone over the fact that most schools have computer labs and computers in the libraries. Accessing them used to be difficult, but now because so many people have laptops and such, many of these computers sit dormant.
Tablets – $150-$500
iPads or Androids, it doesn’t matter what it is, you simply don’t need it for education. Why? For the same reasoning as the laptops and smartphones. It is still just a convenience item. If you feel that you need one for taking notes, that argument doesn’t wash. Taking notes on a tablet is far more difficult than a laptop and we’ve covered why laptops in the classroom aren’t a great idea.Doing research on a tablet is also just an extension of your desire not to go to the library. Go to the library. Learn how to use a book for research. Touch the history and the permanence of knowledge with your hands. One of the most awe-inspiring moments of my education was going into the special collections and reading books from the Middle Ages. To touch real vellum imparts a knowledge you can’t get from simply reading the text on a screen. To see that each word was painstakingly hand-written gives importance to the knowledge recorded therein. That book may have been the only book that someone saw in their entire life! You can’t get that wisdom by downloading a book from the web. Does Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales really deserve a place next to Jetpack Joyride? No, no it doesn’t. But if you do deem it necessary, try to save some money by reading Ryan Dube’s, Apple Offers Back-To-School Gift Cards For Product Purchases piece. It could get you a $50 Apple gift card.
Calculators – $50-$200
“Whoa Guy!”, you exclaim, “I need my calculator!”. This is the one gadget for which I agree that there possibly might be an actual need. For most science-based courses, it has become an expectation that you have a calculator. The only reason for this is that over time, the calculator has become ubiquitous.There was a time where the only tool many people had for advanced math was a slide-rule. Engineers built marvels based on calculations done with these devices. Mind you, the calculations took a little longer than with a calculator. Yet it is that time that allowed for the entrenchment of formulas and principles in the minds of students. They didn’t need to do 100 math problems in 20 minutes. They did maybe 20 in a 100 minutes, and they learned the math forever.
You only need it because everyone else had one since the late 1980′s. But I urge you to get one with only the functions that you really need. If you’re an English major and you have a Statistics class, you don’t need a $200 calculator that can graph the trajectory of a missile – or draw a cat.
Just get the $10 one. If you are a science student, try to do at least a couple problems all on paper. Then you’ll know that you won’t be useless if you are stuck in a situation without a calculator.
Gaming Console – $200-$500
I thought this would be obvious, yet it’s an item I keep seeing on Back To School Gadget lists everywhere! You don’t need a flipping Xbox, Playstation, Nintendo… whatever! That’s what we used to call recreational not educational! The argument being made is that they’re needed to blow off some steam and reduce stress.Have you tried, maybe, leaving your dorm room? There is a gym! There are many amazing cultural activities on campus, most of them free! Get out of the house now that you don’t live at home. Expose yourself to new activities and cultures. It is often this aspect of higher education that will set you apart from the rest of the degree drones when you hit adulthood. You’ll make friends that you don’t just message on Facebook. These will become the people that form your peer group as you embark on taking on the world.
Just leave the console at home. Someone in your building will bring a few anyway and they’ll need you to kill the next boss. Or maybe have your floor chip in and get one for the common room. Then everyone is responsible for taking care of it. Just a thought.