Technology can affect learning in positive and negative ways. As the class transforms into a technology based classroom we are experiencing these changes. The goal was to become a paperless classroom, the net-books allow us to take one more step towards that goal.
Having a technology based classroom has it's advantages, such as easy access. Having an igoogle account and posting our assignments on a blog means that we can access our work from home. Those of us that have Internet at home can log on to igoogle and write our weekly responses, and post them on our blogs for Master P to read. If we're stuck at home sick for days on end we can do our work from home. The class will no longer print out our assignments that are due twice a week, so we're environmentally friendly. With a computer any desirable information is only a few clicks away, such as a dictionary, thesaurus, and google search.
Technology also has its disadvantages, if a student doesn't have Internet access at home then they consequently have less time to work on their assignments. There's also the subject of spending so much time on the computer. Those of us with sensitive eyes may get headaches after 45 minutes staring at a net-book screen. Technology in general makes students lazier. Instead of rereading their work students generally just press the spell check button and call it good. This tends to happen when we do any assignment on the computer. Some students may have trouble figuring out how to work all the different sites.
Ultimately the net-books are an improvement for our English class. It's very convenient and environmentally friendly, as soon as we get familiar with how the sites work I think that we will have a very content English class.
Yep. Good insight.
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