Read the excerpt from an essay about educational technology. With a laptop for every public school student, eager learners have the world at their fingertips. But will there still be eager learners, or will students be mindless drones heedlessly surfing the Internet on classroom time? Computers are an invaluable research tool, and laptops render content imminently accessible-but accessibility has a downside. When every question posed to a student can be answered by a search engine, what happens to that student's need to learn? Perhaps it will suffer the same fate as dusty books and desktops, vanishing in antiquity. How does the author's word choice affect the tone of the excerpt? The words downside and perhaps impart a skeptical tone. The words invaluable and accessible impart a complimentary tone. The words drones and vanishing impart a humorous tone. The words dusty and antiquity impart an irritable tone.

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Hayley Beard

English

31 March, 22:25

Read the excerpt from an essay about educational technology. With a laptop for every public school student, eager learners have the world at their fingertips. But will there still be eager learners, or will students be mindless drones heedlessly surfing the Internet on classroom time? Computers are an invaluable research tool, and laptops render content imminently accessible-but accessibility has a downside. When every question posed to a student can be answered by a search engine, what happens to that student's need to learn? Perhaps it will suffer the same fate as dusty books and desktops, vanishing in antiquity. How does the author's word choice affect the tone of the excerpt? The words downside and perhaps impart a skeptical tone. The words invaluable and accessible impart a complimentary tone. The words drones and vanishing impart a humorous tone. The words dusty and antiquity impart an irritable tone.

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Wizard · Answer 1

The word "downside" perhaps imparts a skeptical tone, by implying that when all the information is available on just about anything in the world is available at a student's finger tips the student may lose his drive to learn and gain knowledge by his/her own effort. On the other hand, the ability to research topics so thoroughly and easily can result in much better writing and more accurate scientific information and thus be used as a tool to do more advanced creative work.