In today’s education environment, it’s difficult to lose assignments when working online, which helps students feel more in control of their work. In addition, students have created the common excuse that they “lost their assignment” or “forgot it at home” in order to justify their missing or late homework. Technology, specifically student Chromebooks, help mitigate this excuse as all assignments are kept in one place, allowing assignments to be located with ease. Using technology effectively can be hard, but as students who have grown up alongside technology, it’s easier for kids at Ben Davis to adapt. Because all students have different ways of working effectively in school, the benefits of technology all depend on who you ask.

“I use technology to access my online assignments and research what I need,” junior Ashlee Parker Parker said.

Research is another important element of online learning. Instead of searching for information on paper or through a textbook, a quick search on the internet can help students find what they need.

Although technology has made it easy for fake information to appear, students have been taught what they need to look for in a reliable source. These helpful resources have saved students lots of time on projects that might have taken them much longer to complete without using electronics. 

Senior and editor of Ben Davis Spotlight Raelynn Hughes use technology every day in order to make the newspaper such a success. 

“It’s a lot easier working on the newspaper when we have the world at our fingertips,” Hughes said. “Whether it’s getting photos for a spread, researching a topic to know more about it, or even getting ideas from other newspapers’ designs and spreads.”

The many online resources that we have access to as students help significantly in creating the newspaper.

“Just recently the program we used to put the pages together just went down and we couldn’t work on anything for a week,” Hughes said. “I think that knowing at any time there could be a technical problem and losing everything is really scary.”

Although there are many positives to using technology for so many things, it can also be stressful to rely on it entirely. Electronics can be finicky, and you never know what might happen. Putting so much trust in technology is a risky game, but we often have no other choice. 

Outside of editing the newspaper, Hughes said “I think that technology is good for some people, but not for me. I think that it has a lot of benefits, but it’s also very damaging that everything we are taught these days is online.”

It has become a concern that students tend to spend all day in front of a screen. The benefits of technology have definitely shined through in the past few years, but it’s also hard to know if by incorporating so many technical aspects to learning, we’re actually causing detrimental effects on student health. Do the benefits really outweigh what could potentially be negative consequences?

At Ben Davis, teachers and administrators have helped create this technology-based environment by switching to online assignments and keeping students updated through electronic platforms. Students should never feel uncomfortable or overwhelmed in their learning environments, so teachers at Ben Davis have made it a priority to make sure their students know how to effectively use technology. Technology should always be used as an asset, and never something that prohibits students from learning to their full potential. 

Ben Davis administrators have managed to find an effective way to incorporate technology into student life, and hearing from a few students has displayed the many benefits, as well as some concerns, that technology has given to classrooms and schools. The argument over technology in schools is sure to continue, and there will always be both positive and negative aspects to take into account when discussing the topic.