Doing School Work on the Computer

While the increased usage of computers in our daily lives has possibly created a more   productive overall use of our time, it has also introduced us to forms of entertainment that can quickly consume great amounts of time and attention. When factoring in school work to the computer usage equation, the possibilities of wasted time are vast. School work is not always the most conducive activity for keeping a person focused.

Doing school work on the computer is an exercise in both time management and staying on task. With the click of a mouse button an hour of study time can be lost to a game of solitaire or a quick search of websites. Distractions abound on a computer, too frequently an Instant Message will appear asking for a fraction of your time. A notification from the speakers tells you  have an email waiting and a pop-up bubble tells you an RSS feed has appeared that you need to check out. A 10 second glance at an email can quickly become 30 minutes as you go from link to link reading the latest news.

An additional noted effect of the increase of work done on a computer is the inability to have legible hand writing. With the majority of written work being typed instead of hand written, reports have shown an exponential decrease in quality of penmanship. While this may not seem important at first it can be a symptom of an even bigger problem and can teach children that doing things the "old fashioned" way is not important when in fact it also has it's time and place. The act of studying and doing school work tends to become monotonous and the brain seeks for ways to distract itself. Whether that be staring at a picture for a few seconds or listening to music. This need for stimulation does not have to be a negative thing however. A quick distraction may allow a student to more readily absorb information once they go back to schoolwork.  Working on a computer especially requires occasional breaks where the student takes their eyes off of the computer and gives them a break.

On the other side of that coin is the increased productivity gained from using computers for school work. The ease of typing out a paper often allows for better thought transmission and more detailed work done than traditional hand writing. The ability to easily go back and reword a thought or expand on a thought allows for students to more fully realize their potential. Along with ease also comes a saving in time by working on the computer. It is most of the time quicker to type a paper than to write it out by hand so typing allows a student to get more done in a shorter period of time. Studying on a computer allows a student to have multiple avenues of teaching at their immediate disposal. Alternative views are easily found and questions can be quickly addressed by online dictionaries, encyclopedias or specialized websites. With the addition of the internet there is hardly a question that can be posed that an answer cannot be found for. Of course we do have to pay attention to where our children go on the internet and teach them which sites are best to find answers on. Just because something is online does not mean that it is true.

Whether or not to allow our children to do their work on the computer has become a matter of great debate both among parents and among teachers. It has great potential as a learning aid but many are afraid of the dangers contained at the same time. Also some worry about the potential for cheating when there is so much information readily available. As technology advances this debate will only become more and more pronounced. For the time being though it's an individual thing and it up to each parent and school to decide for themselves.