Technology, especially that involving computers, is not exactly my cup of tea. I’m the only person I’ve ever heard of who has spent multiple frustrating hours trying to format a Microsoft Word document (I wish I was kidding.) So you can imagine my displeasure when I found out that this year a large majority of my assignments for a few select classes would need to be completed online using the educational communicative site blackboard.neric.org. One night as I sat there hitting my computer and wondering why the site wouldn’t upload in response to my desperate clicking (as it turned out, my mouse was unplugged,) I found myself wondering when exactly education had become so technologically advanced. Instead of passing hours in study corals hunched over notes, textbooks and literary works, more students than ever are passing hours in front of a monitor, whizzing through Sparknotes, apnotes.net and online SAT review. Particularly at my own school, which can be easily summed up as small, middle-class and white, kids spend a great deal of time on the internet for schoolwork. I honestly don’t even know if it would be possible to complete all the given assignments if one didn’t have a computer. Yet as far as I’m aware, no one has ever had such an issue. On the contrary, the system seems to be quite effective.

Perhaps computer-assisted learning is so easily accepted because the computer, as a learning tool or otherwise, is incredibly familiar to our generation. We’ve mastered instant messaging slang, we’ve seen every major event (yes, Sanjaya’s departure from American Idol counts as world news in the eyes of some people) on Youtube…some of us have even mastered html expertise to insert pretty little hearts on our Myspace pages. So when a teacher tells us to hop online and fetch this and that around the internet, it’s no big deal. Actually, it’s a hell of a lot easier than having to go to the library to search through books written by dead guys to find the same information.

The internet is a great tool- I can admit that despite all my technological hang-ups. And hey, it’s definitely beneficial to have some computer skills. But the web and other virtual programs shouldn’t be a replacement for a “traditional” education. After all, there really is no substitute for acting out a play in an English class or having an extensive debate as part of a history course. I’m not suggesting that we abolish computers as learning tools, I just think we should use them the same way most things in life are best utilized-in moderation. But while we’re on the topic, can anyone tell me how to put pretty little hearts in here?