When I was 13, I got my first cell phone ever— a tiny black Nokia phone, with a screen as big as my thumb. Four years later, I’m sitting here with a 4.5-inch screen full-touch smartphone, an iPod containing my favourite 347 songs, and a Fujitsu tablet, its screen capable of spinning 180 degrees.

Our school is a tablet school, which means that instead of books and binders and messy bits of paper, we only have to carry around our tablets. These tablets are our notebooks, our iPods, our theatre, our comic books, our video games and the hearts of our social lives.

Walking into a classroom during the middle of a lesson, it is normal to expect the ‘Great Wall of Fujitsu’ — a long line of about 20 black screens, each with the silver infinity symbol of the Fujitsu logo, stretching from one end of the room to the other. Behind each and every one of those screens is a student, either staring into the box of light, intensely tapping their fingers as they copy down the teacher’s words, or nibbling on their stylus as they scroll down an explorer window. Most of the lesson materials — even the grainy black-and-white film of

Romeo and Juliet — are handed out digitally.

During breaks and lunchtime, it’s hard not to see students sitting around campus, chewing their snacks while staring at a tablet. Some sit at lunch tables with tablets open instead of a lunchbox. Out in the yard, on a wooden bench with enough space for three people, are six or seven sixth grade boys/ They are all trying to squeeze onto the same bench while playing an intense match of Call of Duty.

Students 2.0

Students aren’t always working on their tablets — It is inevitable to have a couple of minutes on Facebook, 9GAG or emails with funny pictures and comments between friends. In our defence, these are just another version of the old-fashioned notes that students used to pass around during class, or notebooks filled with doodled caricatures of teachers.

Yet many adults think that our school — our generation — has become too dependent on modern technology. They watch the movie “WALL-E” and worry for our souls. I can relate to them. Sometimes, halfway through lunch, I look up from my phone and see most of the other students doing the same thing: staring down at their phones, iPads and tablets.

But what adults don’t see is what we do when we notice these things. Personally, my friends and I sometimes put all our electronic devices in the middle of the table, and don’t touch them until we are done with our meals.

While our lives are becoming more and more technological at school, we are also experiencing and learning about the problems that this technology brings, adjusting and fixing them as we go. In the future, being permanently stuck on a hovering bed with flickering screens and machines that dress you, wash you and replace your identity may be a possibility.

But there are also many other, perhaps more ideal, images of the future — and it is up to us to shape it to be healthier and more ‘human’. I believe our tablet school does just that: it trains us to become wiser and more experienced leaders of a technological future, be it through simple lunchtime games or a whole new culture of approaching technology!