Few clicks to get the job done

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With their virtual lives gaining prominence over real ones, “teenagers” and “tech-savvy” have almost grown to be synonyms of each other. And if socialising and downloading weren’t enough, they are now using the Internet for their daily assignments ad homework too. With the mushrooming of special sites dedicated for assignments and homework, it seems like this trend is here to stay.
Swati Aiyer who is going to the Class 11 soon relies on the Internet heavily for her academic needs. “Books are simply not enough these days, their information and content being very limited. To complete my assignment thoroughly I need to look up on various sites on the Internet,” says Swati, who like many others, believe in detailed research on their assignment topics. Class 8 student Priyanka Mishra spends at least three to four hours on the Internet daily to ensure her assignments are perfect and submitted on time.
Teens today are too well informed to go beyond the usual Google and Wikipedia. A host of websites have come up in recent years that are designed exclusively for homework purposes. For Chinmay Pandit, the Internet is a click away to a whole lot of information which he otherwise wouldn’t have been able to use. To consolidate his search he logs on to specific recommended websites that provide him with accurate information. “I rely heavily on them for my projects and assignments. I also post doubts and queries on these sites, which is very helpful,” says Chinmay.
Advanced features like conferences and Google groups help in posting answers and co-ordinating with fellow classmates.
Khubi Desai, who finds it very convenient to do homework online with friends, says, “We all log onto Yahoo and have conferences which makes a lot of the work easier, especially if it is a group assignment. File sharing is also easy this way.”
The speed and clarity that such websites provide in the nick of time is also very appealing.
With issues of plagiarism, teachers now keep a tab on the sources of all the information used by students. “That’s okay I guess, since I believe that we shouldn’t actually copy paste whatever we come across online. It’s difficult to survive without the Internet as it provides me with all the information I want, in the least possible time,” says Swati.