I have recently come to the realization that the University of Massachusetts Amherst is a big stinkin’ technology slut. Now I know this may seem like a startling declaration, but bear with me for just a moment, my little chickadees.

Every morning I get up, pack up my backpack, check my e-mail and hit the road. Notice the fact that I do not shower. Then I’ll head to some classes where I check in and answer questions with my PRS and CPS. When I get home I’ll usually spend time with my animals, OWL and DUCK. After that I usually check my WebCT account and take a quiz. At the end of the night, if I’m feelin’ frisky I like to log onto Course Compass and watch the Spanish videos and maybe do some of the activities, but mostly just watch the videos because I think the girls are cute.

I am willing to bet that most of the students on this campus can relate to some, if not many of those activities. In fact I will bet my left nut (the bigger one) on the fact that at some point in the academic career of every current UMass student they will become a slave to some bothersome little technological “educational tool,” whether it is WebCT or DUCK or anything else. Furthermore, I have an inkling that most students at this university are as annoyed, if not more annoyed (kids with no fingers you know who you are), as I am by these weekly wastes of my precious and beautiful youth. The fact of the matter is that the educational benefits of these programs and tools hardly outweigh the frustration and irritation which go along with their implementation.

I’d like to start by discussing CPS and PRS. For those of you that do not know, these are remote response systems used primarily large lectures to ask the whole class questions and take attendance. I think these are so cool. No, really I do. My favorite part about the remotes is that freshman year I had to drop thirty bucks on a PRS, plus six bills to register it, then this year I had to drop another thirty-six bones on something completely different, a CPS.

Did I say different? Oh snap! I meant exactly the same, the only difference is that one uses infrared signals to communicate while the other uses radio frequency. Well at least they serve different purposes. Oh wait a second; they do the exact same thing.

My favorite part is when I forget to bring my CPS or PRS to class (Everyone says “Just leave it in your bag” but that’s sort of hard when its rained for 56 days straight and your bag got wet and your CPS got ruined and you had to buy a new one and your roommate’s mother keeps calling and asking you about whether or not her son is using condoms when he engages in “relations”). So, even though I sit in class for an hour or whatever, my presence meant nothing because I neglected to arm myself with the arsenal of remotes required to click in and confirm my attendance.

Let’s move on. Today, in a startling turn of events I missed a WebCT quiz. This system is more or less the equivalent of a large bunion on your grandma’s foot that just will not go away: It’s recurring and it stinks. For starters, professors love to post news and updates on this system at random times throughout the day. Unfortunately, there is no way to alert students that a new piece of information has been posted. Ergo, students must check it throughout the day in order to find out if some new and important piece of information has been posted. All I am reduced to is a dejected soul checking my account as often as a kid with no friends checks his cell phone for calls

The quizzes are not so bad, I can deal with them. What I can not deal with is the fact that once the quiz has been finished and graded, the evil little elves that run the program will not tell you the correct answer. Why not? I want the answer, without it I have learned nothing. Where’s the benefit?

Then there’s the OWL program. The other day I found out that OWL was going national