Education - The importance of Technology in the Classroom

I am currently working on a thesis regarding the use of technology in the classroom. Below is an excerpt from my dissertation:

The use of computers and the Internet is fast becoming an important tool in the education sector. It is becoming very common for technology to be used for assessing, training and educating students. According to a number of studies conducted by Barbara Means et al. (1997), the use of technology in the classroom has a number of advantages including, better collaboration between students, enhancing student motivation and adding to the students’ perception that their work is credible when properly referenced from the internet. Most educators are overcoming the barrier posed by these ever-more sophisticated technological tools and they now understand that technology is a particularly important tool for assessing their students. The fact that modern students are very dependent on technology proves how important it is that their teachers employ more modern methods in their classroom so as to meet the interests and capabilities of their students.

The use of technology in the classroom can certainly make teaching easier and more efficient by saving us precious time. I am currently in the process of creating an online application (which is part of my thesis) to be used by teachers and their students. I had been searching online for the ultimate teaching tool for years and I failed to find it. The applications that I found were too complicated, limited in functionality, or required a monthly subscription payment...so I decided to create it myself. This will be a website created by a teacher for teachers and it will be 100% free. As you might have noticed, the website will be called Mentor Buddy (www.mentorbuddy.com). I'm putting the last finishing touches to the whole thing and hopefully it should be launched sometime in late October. In the meantime the internet has a wealth of resources for teachers: from lesson plans to tests ready for printing. The internet can make our job so much easier, the trick is to know how to search for the proper information.