Last week I wrote about how S2 had been looking at the reporting of the iPad venture in our school. They then used their research to write a persuasive essay aiming to convince their readers that the iPads are a great idea.

The class were asked to make use of persuasive techniques, such as: emotive language, rhetorical questions, the use of the 2nd person (i.e. addressing the reader as 'you') and providing convincing evidence.

Here is an abridged version of Nathan Bonner's essay, which I'm sure you will agree is an enthusiastic and persuasive piece of work:

Have you ever been told by your teacher that your class is getting to go on the computers and when you get there, another class has made it before you? Or maybe you're going on the laptops and by the time you get logged on, you've missed half the lesson.

At Cedars School of Excellence, we used to have those problems. But then, our I.T. Teacher, Mr Fraser Speirs, had the idea to have a 1:1 deployment of computer company Apple's latest technology, the iPad! Now everyone of the pupils here has their very own portable digital tablet! It takes literally seconds to get logged on and everyone enjoys using them. And if you're over 10 you can bring them home to do your homework on!

What do the classes think? Well the primary love them! Mrs Speirs, the head teacher and Fraser Speirs' mother, had trouble with her Primary 3 class learning number bonds. Since we got the iPads they can't get enough of Maths. The iPad makes pupils want to learn! And not just the primary either. In secondary, we have a calendar to write down our homework. And we can also go on YouTube to watch Science Experiments we couldn't do in the school. I've had my own great experience with the iPad as well. My favourite application is Brushes, where you use your finger to draw. And there are a lot of different types of brushes you can use to make excellent pictures.

And that's not the only good thing about them. Since we got the iPas, the school has become a lot more Eco Friendly. We haven't totally got rid of paper and pencil, but we use a lot less of it. Another economic value is that the iPad is wireless. We still need to charge it but that only takes 1-2 hours and the battery can store days of charge.

Another great thing about the iPad is that it's practical. You have Safari, YouTube, Pages, Keynote and a lot more applications. Everything I now need is in this small, digital tablet. For Art, there is Brushes, a drawing application I mentioned earlier in the essay. For Maths, Mental Maths, another great application which covers quite a lot of things in Maths such as basic addition to roman numerals to algebra. For English, we can use Pages, for typing essays like I am right now. There are millions of these "Apps" with a world of possibilities.

In conclusion, the iPad has made school life a whole lot easier. They're portable, they have the Internet- they have almost everything a normal computer/laptop has. Life at Cedars School of Excellence is now green. Green as an apple, that is.

Nathan Bonner