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While iPads might be taking up a lot of buzz in the classroom technology world, laptops are still a widely used tool for both personal and classroom use. Choosing a laptop may not be a simple task, either - there are a lot of choices out there. Making sure it has the right tools you need and falls into a price range that works for you tend to be the top two factors for most people who are in the market for a new laptop. So we thought it'd be useful to tackle the best laptops for teachers in a world filled with iPads and smartphones.

"I decided to use the teacher console on Diigo to create groups for each of my classes. I used handouts and tips from Bill Ferriter's Digitally Speaking Wiki to get everything set up and explain to the student how I wanted them to find, annotate, and share resources and information. (I highly recommend Bill's resources. They saved me a ton of time.) The students had used Diigo for research on a project during a previous school year so I thought with Bill's handouts and the boys' previous experience we were in good shape to begin. I soon learned differently. We have a 1:1 laptop classroom and the boys have a natural tendency to head straight to Google any time they have a question, but it was obvious after the first day that they weren't finding the quality resources they needed. Additionally, some boys still didn't know (or forgot) how to share to a group while others didn't know how to write a quality annotation. I had assumed too much. They needed what Mike Kaechele calls a "teacher workshop" on searching for information and on how to use Diigo. They needed me to model what they should do."

A newly published study concludes that people actually remember better when they've taken handwritten notes, rather than typed ones. In fact, studying from typed notes could actually hurt your test scores.