The Pros and Cons of Internet On Education from Then and Now

The only opportunity that I was able to visit my alma matter was during election period as class rooms were turned to election precincts and though I have an entirely different purpose on my visit to the school, there was always this feeling of nostalgia in me wherever I look around the school premise. But at the same time, it also becomes very clear how the school has changed through time which also mirrors how the education system has changed through time. On most cases, I think they were for the better but there were also things that I think was better when I was studying compared to the present time.

Going back during my elementary to early high school days, access to internet was not a common thing which means that pupils mostly rely on books when gathering information. This means that in order the information that students want to find, they need to look on not just one but maybe multiple books to find it and while others thinks that it was a pain and tiresome to go through this, I think that it was a good thing because it helps the students to improve their investigative skills. Now internet was easily accessible and information can be easily searched just by typing a single phrase and sometime even just with a single word that the information was almost spoon-feed to us. That doesn't stop there because now, there are A.I. programs such as Chat GPT that not only search for the information that we are looking for but also sorted it for us. So we are now in the point in time where teachers also need to look whether the project that was submitted to them was a work of a human or not.

Aside from this, I think that having an access to internet also gives a lot of distraction to students with social media and video games which reduces their time for studying. Also, just recently, I saw a very disturbing video about Ipad Kids from Project Nightfall where due to overexposure to internet and gadgets, kids continue to fall behind their education and worst, they become violent when their gadgets are taken away from them. Additionally, it is most likely for them to be exposed to pornography and with the curiosity that comes with childhood sometimes comes with irreversible mistakes like teenage pregnancy. Thinking of this, I wish that I could back on the time when we ware happy enough playing tag or hide and seek with friends because that would at least allow you kids to burn their calories or by playing with board games such as chess and monopoly would allow children to develop their decision- making skill.

With that said, I would not say that having an access to internet was an incredibly bad thing as it also brought many positives for improving the education.

For example, during the past years, we saw how the world have turned upside down due to the emergence of the Covid pandemic. Hospitals were full, many people dies and gets sick but most of all was the worldwide lockdown that result for many establishments to close and even schools were not exempted. With no idea of when everything goes back to normal, students will have no means to study but with the help of modern technology and the internet, teachers were able to connect to the students through virtual class and allow for the children to study on the confines of their home. Just imagining if the pandemic hits during my elementary- early high school years when access to internet was limited might not only result for me to skip a year or two from studying, I would also probably go very bored with nothing else to do.

Aside from that, I also want to emphasize how school materials and visual aids have greatly improved now, compared to when I was in elementary years. During my elementary years, I can only rely on the black and white images on books when studying but now, hanks to the internet, it becomes easier to acquire documentaries and education shows, just download it and even a student can get a copy of it and this allows for the teachers to better teach their student. For example, watching how an actual cheetah runs and hunt for its prey gets a student a better understanding of its behavior compared to just reading it on a book or the teachers explaining them. Furthermore, with the advancement of technology, this visual materials can be enlarge through using projectors or lard monitors so every students gets to watch it at the same time.

So yeah, Internet have thier downsides in the present day when it comes to education that I think the situation when I was still studying was better but at the same time, Internet also provided things to improve our current education system. Regardless, it was here and one way we could reduce it downsides was for parents guiding their children so that they can learn properly.

Thank you for reading my post and see you on the next one!