Education and Technology

Many people are saying that technology has made our lives easier. With modern technologies we can do things faster and with lesser effort.  As an agronomist, I agree with this. I have experienced how modern technologies have been able to improve crop yield. As a college instructor teaching agronomy subjects, I have already benefitted from technology, especially the internet. Because of the internet, it becomes easier for me to get information that I can use for my lectures. Also, it becomes easier and faster for me to share information with my students.

There is, however, one drawback that I have observed when it comes to technology use especially in relation to education. This is when I give assignments to my students. I would tell them they can search the internet for some references which they use. But when they submit their reports, I always notice that much of the information included there were just lifted from articles published in the internet. Many students don’t care to synthesize what they read, and some do not even acknowledge their sources of information. I’m beginning to get worried about this because if students will continue doing this practice of just lifting information from the internet and using it in their reports without citing the source, they are committing plagiarism. Plagiarism is a kind of cheating and “academic dishonesty,” so I think that teachers should take time to really check if the assignments their students would submit to them are not plagiarized. Also, teachers should be careful not to commit plagiarism themselves.