A multiplicity of factors impact on education and how teachers teach and children learn. Factors such as books, television, parents, society and physical infrastructure to name a few; but no other single factor has impacted so significantly in recent times as has computers. Computers, and in particular the internet has changed how users learn. Information and Computer Technology (ICT), according to Vacca and Vacca (2008) has created ' "new technologies" and new ways of learning' (p 416). Reiking (1995) further presents the argument that computers are changing the way we communicate and disseminate information. Other experts and the lay man on the street certainly will agree that computers have made us a more literate and knowledgeable population. Computers and the internet have allowed us a means of instant research, allowing us to educate ourselves in almost all subject areas.
Yet while most of the world has embraced the changes resulting from computer technology, educationalists, its greatest advocate, also stifle its use. Donald Lau (2002), a leading advocate for new literacies points out a major flaw in assessments in the United States (and of course similar trends exist in Trinidad and Tobago), and that is that not a single reading or writing assessment permits the use of anything other than paper and pencil technologies. Can you identify ways in which computers and internet can help students perform better at assessments in any particular area? State the area and how these improvements can be realised.
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