Students Use Technology... but to Learn?

I have never been to Facebook or MySpace, I don't have a Twitter account, I haven't posted a new blog in months, I have talked on a cell phone for less than a half hour in my life, and I have sent exactly one text (or is it txt?) message. By most college student standards I might as well be in the Stone Age, but I still spend about 11 hours each day with technology.

School assignments, talking to people all over the world on various sites, and reviewing my list of RSS feeds is enough to consume two-thirds of my day.

Ninety-seven percent of Americans 18-24 years of age—which includes traditional college students—participate in social networking, according to Forrester Research. More importantly, studies have shown that students score higher when teachers integrate technology into the classroom.

Why don't more students use technology as a tool to reach a goal that we share—learning? Not learning which of your friends are going to the mall later, but knowledge that you can actually use to get better grades.

BC3's main campus has computers in multiple computer labs and in the library (that's the building with all the books people would use before this Internet thing came along). BC3 also provides everyone with an e-mail address—everybody has access, there's no excuse not to take advantage of it.

If you're still using a computer to access the Internet, but are unsure how, just find somebody younger. Over 70% of kids aged 6-11 have used the Internet in the past month, according to Mediamark Research & Intelligence.

One attraction of the Internet is the ability to connect with more people and improve relationships with the people you already know. They are called "social" networking sites for a reason. Our parents never imagined being able to instantly communicate with people in any country they wanted to.

I don't recommend spending too much on a new flash drive, because they are going to be obsolete sooner than one might think. With the emergence of cloud computing anybody can save their files to Microsoft's Office Live or Google Docs. These services allow users to store their files—Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDFs, pictures—online so they can be accessed from any device connected to the Internet.

Users have the option to share their files. Add your notes to an Office Live folder and share it with the other people in your class. Lose you notebook, computer virus, printer out of ink, sick and can't get to class? Don't worry, it's all online.

You don't have to stop at your friends.

Use YouTube to help find examples of public speakers for speech class. Regardless of the topic, viewers can pick up on body language and use of props or PowerPoint. Not everybody on the Internet is a good public speaker, but you can learn what to avoid from poor speakers as much as what to emulate in the good ones.

Purdue University's Online Writing Lab (OWL) has a number of resources for English class. Don't call your professor in a panic at 1 a.m., find the answer on OWL.

Just because Google, Bing, and Wikipedia are household names doesn't mean that they are always right. Each of these sites are a great starting point for research, but try to find multiple sources for information just to make sure.

When researching, try using the features available through the Beck Library on Blackboard. Databases like EBSCOhost and America's Newspapers often turn up articles not found by regular search engines.

Blackboard itself is an underutilized resource in itself. While teaching and learning should start in the classroom, discussions on Blackboard can keep students thinking about what they have learned when they are not on campus—where they should be using it.