Although there are some positive effects, the negative impact of technology on education has been extraordinary. The technology community has worked hard to bring useful technology into our classrooms, all with good intentions to broaden our knowledge. With these good intentions also came unwanted side effects such as distractions and disruptions in the classroom. I clearly remember many of my teachers yelling at us to put away our cell phones, iPods, and iTouch phones, especially during lessons and exams. The shouting was not without just cause, the students were cheating with their devices and even updating their Facebook pages during lessons. While being exposed to technologies like computers from an early age may have given us the ability to do things more efficiently, technology has also made us less dependent on ourselves. Claudia Wallis, editor of Time, notes in her article on The Multitasking Generation: “That level of multiprocessing and interpersonal connectivity is now so common that it's easy to forget how quickly it arrived. Fifteen years ago, most home computers weren't even connected to the Internet” (63). There are many things that students are able to do on their computers that their parents don't even know about or that the parents couldn't do on their own. My parents always talk about flipping through the library card catalog and looking for the books they needed only to find they had been taken out. Computers have allowed us to do many things faster, for example, write much faster than a typewriter or pen and paper, and correct typos without starting over. The computers and technology we have today make almost anything easier and with technology so easily at our fingertips that... middle of paper... there is no doubt that it will be used as an educational tool and, just as there are worries now, there will be worries then too. I believe that in the next few years, physical classrooms will be a thing of the past, while virtual classrooms will become the norm. With these virtual classrooms there will be even more cause for concern, and if they become the norm who knows what other sources of distraction there will be. There will always be technology as long as there are people, for better or worse, and their progress will always be discussed. Technologies such as computers, iPads, and cell phones should be used sparingly in the classroom. Using technology for anything during our daily lives hinders our independence. To keep their minds sharp in the classroom, people need to rely more on them and less on the technology that dominates their lives today.