The rush seems to be on as schools replace desk top computers in favour of portable tablets, but education experts remain unsure of the true educational benefits of such technology in the classroom.

Any teacher will tell you children learn better and retain much more when they write things down rather than just typing. Legible handwriting will always be an essential skill not just at school but throughout a person`s lifetime.  Personal interaction between students and teachers remains paramount to good learning outcomes.

Through the National Secondary Schools Computer Fund, a key plank of the $2.4 billion Education Revolution, schools have been able to buy notebooks, laptops and tablets. As a result, students are now lugging a three kilogram laptop to and from school every day.  It`s hard for a child to look after a sensitive piece of the electronic equipment. There are often drawbacks as simple as lack of power points in classrooms and insufficient bandwidth available at school.