WE'VE ALL had to deal with the nonsense at some period. A teacher stands over you with a frown and an outstretched hand, ready to collect your brand-new, red-encased, eight-gigabyte iTouch. Steups.

Obviously, he doesn’t have enough papers to correct. I don’t understand the issue in listening to music to calm down after a particularly stressful exam. That fell on my birthday. That was my worst subject.

That was packed with questions that my Principles of Accounts teacher said would not be tested, but that managed to find their way onto the paper. Would the staff rather I use my fists and the walls as stress relief?

I want to say to all those teachers: When you were 19, the computer filled an entire room, but it doesn’t mean that you have to hate on technology. It doesn’t bite. I promise. You all need to stop viewing iPods and other forms of technology as toys and see them as tools.

We live in the 21st century, so the way students learn has to be 21st century. Stop using the same methods invented one hundred years ago to teach. It is boring! Your classes are making me dribble faster than a picture of Christian Renaldo without a shirt. 

No-one wants to sit and listen to you drone on about a lesson that even you are fed-up with.

Why not introduce the iPod into the classroom and let us learn through it? We can watch history in the making by way of live updates on news channel websites.

We can record classes, which will work as more efficient notes. We can listen to songs and look at movies in foreign languages to improve our speaking and understanding skills.

Otherwise, trust me, just like the Nintendo 64, you will be outdated … if you aren’t already.

Embrace it. Realize that you cannot stop the technological revolution. iPods, iPads, even Kindles are essential to many lives. So if school is supposed to prepare me to exist in the wider world but ignores the fact that these gadgets are a huge part of the same wider world and bans them, then the educational system has not done its job, because it is preparing students for a world that existed 30 years ago.

That means that the teachers, the principals and the Ministry of Education have failed — failed not only me, but thousands of other students as well. Shame on you. 

True, some students will download negative material and try to disturb other students. Like any technological advancement, there are unfavourable repercussions, but we keep the devices because the good undoubtedly outweighs the bad.

The World Wide Web made pornography more accessible to everyone, but we didn’t banish the Internet. Why? Because we understand that its potential to make knowledge and appreciation more obtainable surpasses that unsatisfactory capability. 

The invention of cars dramatically increased pollution rates. But I still see cars on the road. All kinds of cars — red ones, yellow ones and blue ones. Why? Because their usefulness is undisputed. Instead of stopping the production of cars, scientists developed ways to reduce cars’ negative impact, such as the use of biofuels and the engineering of cars that run on electricity. 

In the same way, there is software available that allows you to block unwanted sites. Duh! Stop using that as an excuse; it’s like a student telling a teacher that the dog ate her homework. Lame!

So teachers, word of advice, gather up all that imagination and creativity that you’re constantly telling students to find — and use it to make classes more interesting. Students can download common books onto the iTouch and follow in class without the load of a heavy bag.

The class can develop flashcards to make studying easier; who forgets their iTouch at home? On a trip to an art exhibition, students can take notes of the pieces on their iTouch instead of using loose sheets of paper that can be easily lost. This way, you’re not the weird Mr. Andrews who wears his pants under his nose, but the cool Mr. Andrews who gets it.

There is no need to be stuck in the 19th century. The geeks in the world are going to continue to invent smaller, sleeker and sexier gadgets. If you’re skeptical about the iPod and iTouch now, imagine all the scary devices those geeks will invent in a year or two. (Shiver!)

Today’s students are far more intelligent than what is expected of them.

And if our technology is integrated into our syllabi, we begin to see how the information we learn relates to us. That will make all the difference in the number of us who fall through the cracks.

If we are no longer bored, we pay attention, and if we pay attention, we will succeed.

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