Laptop Case Study: Natick High School

At first glance, Natick High School may seem to showcase all of the ideals of 21st century, technology-based learning: A sparkling new building houses sleek Apple products that highly-trained teachers use to implement the latest in project-based digital learning and innovation. However, a closer examination also reveals that Natick High is home to many of the concept’s pitfalls as well. Expensive laptops break the town’s budget while academic mediocrity permeates the student body, who opt for Facebook over Faulkner and Instagram instead of integrals. Staff wonder aloud to their students if it would be better for the district to return to an already functional model of education with less technology. Therefore, the Natick High School administration should

Laptops do not foster educational excellence, the core purpose of any school, and so should therefore not be used in them. Our very own Natick High enshrines every student’s “highest academic potential” in its mission statement. Unfortunately, laptops for every student are not an evidence-based solution to improve learning outcomes. A laptop places the entire Internet at a student’s fingertips instead of just the classroom experience in front of them, often leading students to multitask and access non-course related content. A recent study observed that simply viewing other off-task students brought down student performance on a multiple-choice quiz after a lecture by a whopping 17%, equivalent to the difference between an A+ and a B- (Sana, Weston, and Cepeda). Researchers at Princeton University and the University of California, Los Angeles find that, even when students are all on-task, “laptop note takers’ tendency to transcribe lectures verbatim rather than processing information and reframing it