How Do Computers Benefit Education?

A more interesting question might be: DO computers benefit education?

Computers can serve as excellent information resources, and it should go without saying (as I'm on a website) that once you connect them to the internet then that service improves a millionfold (over just being able to use them with whatever reference CD-ROMs you can lay your hands on).

The problem is that there is a temptation not to learn as much these days, because the internet is the biggest library in human history - why memorise facts when you can just go and google things you need to know? Or use sites like this one to get your answers?

Anyway, back to the question. They help you practice maths and learn computer programming, obviously  - both useful workplace skills. Word Processing packages can help you produce nice neat essays, but again it's a double-edged sword. If you have Microsoft Word to hand you may never learn to spell that well (use the spell checker) or even write that neatly (just hit Print when you're done).

There's all kinds of other software you could be running to help you learn or to help you carry out educational exercises, but I think the 2 headlines are: The internet is a huge ***** library and there's arguably a disadvantage to every advantage computers provide to us learning (or not bothering to learn).