FORTY-SIX

How Technology Has Changed the Way We . . . Do Homework

BY MEGAN DOSCHER

November 13, 2000

As homework for his dramatic-literature class, Arash Keshmirian designed a model of the ballroom scene from “Pygmalion.” But he didn’t spend long evenings building it with glue and Popsicle sticks. The Palo Alto High School senior polished off his assignment in about four hours using 3-D rendering software on his hand-built 800-megahertz personal computer. The software gave him the ability to lend his model real-world dimensions and textures, including a parquet dance floor.

And once his assignment was completed, Mr. Keshmirian uploaded the file from home to his personal “digital locker” on his high school’s network.This spared him from having to save the file on several floppy disks or “burn it on a CD,” he says, to transport the file to school.

Doing homework is nothing like it used to be. Technology has given students access to information and tools that vastly increase the potential of what they can accomplish. In 1999, 95% of public schools had Internet access, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Meanwhile, 26.2% of U.S. households had Internet access in the same period, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration reports. Many schools are creating their own Web sites as well, allowing students to communicate more with teachers and one another. Meanwhile, educators and parents, not to mention students, are hoping that the days of the 50-pound backpack loaded with texts may be nearing an end as e-books and personal digital assistants become more widely used.

But with new technology comes a new set of problems. Not every student has access to a computer at home. Some students use the resources available to them to cut corners or copy homework from questionable sources. And some adults worry about the effect technology is having on teenagers, who find themselves facing much higher expectations.

The Internet has taken away at least one common excuse for missed homework assignments. Most teachers at Palo Alto High School, nicknamed Paly, post homework assignments on their own sections of the California school’s Web site. Of course, this can be a double-edged sword for students who show up empty-handed, claiming they didn’t know about the assignment. “It gives me enormous pleasure to say to the students, ‘Nearly the entire civilized world could have looked up your homework last night,’ ” says Charles Merritt, a Spanish teacher.

Paly is far from paperless, however, despite its extensive use of the Web. Many educators, in fact, worry about a “digital divide” and take steps to make sure that no students are left out. Mr. Merritt always hands out a written copy of homework assignments in his classes, he says, because “I’m very much aware that if even one student doesn’t have access to the Internet at home, then I’m excluding someone.”

But for those students who do have access, all sorts of other “homework helpers” exist on the Web, from America Online Inc.’s AOL Homework Help, which offers study rooms and allows students to send e-mail questions to experts, to StudyWeb.com, which provides a directory of educational sites organized by topic and rated by its staff.

And individual classes find treasure troves of information at more specific sites. Art students can check out virtual museums online, while a class on government can go straight to the White House Web site. Career classes have access to Web sites listing millions of jobs around the world, and economics students can check the latest interest-rate data from the Federal Reserve’s site.

But some potential homework aids are of a dubious nature. For instance, several sites, including Travlang.com and AltaVista, offer translations from English to various foreign languages (and vice versa), but Mr. Merritt, the Spanish teacher, says they aren’t effective as shortcuts for the homework he assigns—and he has demonstrated their inadequacies in class.

“It’s so easy to make [the online translators] fail spectacularly by throwing in a few English idioms,” he says.

Mary Ellen Minichiello, a high-school teacher in Milford, Conn., says she tries to teach her students to be discriminating in their use of online sources and to understand that sometimes the best information isn’t on the Internet.

Ms. Doscher is an editor for WSJ.com in New York.

WIRED AT SCHOOL . . .

Percentage of schools with Internet access

Source: National Center for Education Statistics

. . . AND AT HOME

Percentage of households with Internet access (September 2000)

Source: International Data Corp.