What are the advantages and disadvantages of computers in the teaching and learning process? How do they affect the academic performance of students...

Wow! This
question is timely for me, because I will be teaching at a school next year in which, all
students will receive apple laptops.  They will be allowed to take the computers home, and we
will encorporate computer usage into daily instruction.

As an English
teacher, I find computers to be very helpful for the following reasons:

1.
Students are able to reasearch information quickly.  They can find their own answers, discover
their own truths.

2. Computers lend themselves to a lot of creative and
interestion activities i.e. creating a "commercial to advertise your favorite
book"

There are also some downfalls:

1. Students can
easily get off task.  They may wander to sites like Facebook, MySpace etc.  (I know that schools
usually block these sites, but students often find ways around them.

2. 
Without knowing it teachers can create computer-related activities that are quite exciting, but
the intended content is not learned i.e. teachers focus too much on the "cool
activity" rather that the actual lesson itself.