Take a few moments and think about your job. Do you use a laptop to help make and organize your documents?

How would you feel about someone at work taking away your computer and switching you to an iPad without your consent?

For eight years, Mt. Ararat High School has offered the laptop program to its students to increase learning opportunities. It has proven to be an extremely effective tool, but the school board is thinking of replacing them with an iPad instead.

This is mostly due to the recent budget cuts being introduced to the district. The school is trying desperately to find ways to save money without taking away technology that helps students learn.

Most Mt. Ararat students have been able to use and take home a laptop since seventh grade. We have grown accustomed to the privileges they give us, and would hate to see them go away.

Replacing laptops with i-Pads is way the school board believes it can save money, but at what cost?

I believe the change would be a horrible mistake. The iPad is a step backward in leaning from the laptop. The efficiency of learning may be negatively affected if the laptops are replaced.

From personal experience, Internet access is inefficient with the iPad. The Wi-Fi range is not as far, it has vastly less storage space, and the touch screen breaks and is unreliable at times.

When there are problems with laptops breaking, parts are usually easy to replace without much of a hassle. But the parts used inside an i-Pad are not as easily accessible, and harder to replace.

The students at Mt. Ararat have benefited from the the laptop program. It allows them to type essays, do research, communicate with others and share information for projects easily. Documents are easily accessible and quite easy to modify. One of the main applications is Pages, used for typing up essays and other papers. It is relatively simple to use with little difficulty.

The iPad doesn’t have Pages. Typing on the iPad’s touch screen — instead of a keyboard, as with laptops — is quite difficult.

NoteShare is another commonly used application on laptops that teachers use to share information and documents with the students. As far as I know, NoteShare is not available on the iPad, making it much more difficult to share documents.

There are other applications — used to run simulations and make complex graphs — not available on the iPad but available on the laptops.

Financially speaking, you get more for your money buying a laptop over the i-Pad.

My laptop still has more than 120 GB of space — even after half the school year has gone by. A 32-GB iPad costs around $600. Laptops with more than three times the storage space cost only about $300 more than the iPads.

With all of the documents and apps students need to get by in school, the 32-GB iPad’s space would be quickly eaten up, and students would not have enough storage space to last them all year.

I have talked to some of my fellow classmates about how they would feel if the school board changed from laptops to iPads. All of their responses were the same. Every single one of them despised the idea.

I hope the school takes into consideration what the students think of the change. After all, it is our education they would be adjusting.

Shouldn’t the students have a say in some of the choices that have an effect on us?

I strongly advise the school board not to take away the privileges we have with the laptops and replace them with a tool as ineffective in education as the iPad.

The iPad would be a step backward in educational advantages, and would cause more problems than they’re worth.

ANDREW MCCRACKEN is a sophomore at Mt. Ararat High School.