Technology = Lazy Students?

People today sing the praises of technology, particularly it's role in education. However, there is a question out there, one that seems to be surprsingly unaswered. That question is: does technology make students academically lazy? Most students do not know where to find good resources for research papers until they reach college; they rely on the internet for their information.

For centuries students and teachers did not have the technology that we have today, not until about a decade ago. Yet the academic society has rapidly adapted to technology and all it has to offer, so much so that old ways of "doing" school are disappearing. Computers are replacing proper penmanship, calculators are repleacing mathematics, and the internet/podcasts are replacing proper researching/learning methods. Yet, these "ways of old" are not inferior. Many brilliant minds that the present generations have yet to match are from the past. Soreen Kierkegaard, Bietrich Bonhoeffer, Aristotle, Charles Dickens, all of these people have at least two things in common: they did not have our common technology and they still profoundly influenced the world of education.

Technology today also allows students to procrastinate more than they had in the past. They now know that their research paper can get a B- or even better, even if it isn't started until two weeks before it was due (out of an eight week period).

Overall I think that technology can profoundly influence students today, but it is up to the teacher and the student on whether that influence is going to be a bad one or a good one.