Traditional education meets the web

On my last post I talked about the importance of the web and the impact that it has had on society as a whole. Like everything in life, the web has its pros and cons, but in the end it was concluded that it had ultimately affected us in a extremely positive way. One of the areas that has received a huge impact is education.

As a college student, the web has been a huge part of my education. It represents so much that I am currently taking a course, called INF 103, at the Universidad del Sagrado Corazón, that exclusively focuses on how to navigate and participate in the web in a safe matter. This motivated me to talk about how much the web has influenced the education of millions of students worldwide.

If we look at today’s classrooms worldwide, it’ll be easy to identify that most courses, if not all, require the use of the web in one way or another. More impressively, some courses are now completely online, with no requirement of attending a physical classroom. It is no longer necessary to visit a library and search for a book in order to receive information, we can do that in the facility of our own smartphone or computer. If we need help with certain material we can just look it up online to understand it more clearly. All by all, the web has facilitated and simplified today’s mode of education. The knowledge stayed the same, the web just provided a new, more innovative way of transmitting it. This has been a blessing, but also a curse.

The web has simplified the way we get new information, but it has also, in a general sense, made us think we are entitled to receive everything, education wise, in a simplified matter. In a way, the web has made us more lazy. Having everything literally at the palm of our hands isn’t always a good thing. Now, don’t get me wrong, I truly believe the web has done for us more good than bad, I just think that we have to always keep in mind that not everything is a given, some things we do have to work hard for. Another con that I find in using the web in terms of education is that the web itself is a distraction. I for one usually get distracted from doing my work due to social media, youtube, etc. So, using the web can represent a huge distraction from your work if you have short attention span like I do.

The web is a huge tool for students everywhere, myself included. It is up to us to decide if we use it in a positive or negative matter.