The Internet Culture: How it is shaping Education Everyday

Bill Gates said, “the internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow.” The internet culture is becoming more and more crucial to our lives these days. Someone who does not know his way around the internet is nearly an outcast. In such a situation, we must pause for a moment to evaluate how much of an influencer internet is in our daily lives. Especially you, as students and young impressionable minds on whose shoulders tomorrow rests should stop and look at how crucial the internet has become in your lives and how dependable you have become in this virtual world. Here are some parts of your life as a student that the internet has taken over.

1. Additional study material
Have you looked at the difference between the kind of education your parents received and you do now? Your parents and their parents had barely any access to additional books or study material compared to you. The only additional texts they had were limited because hardly anyone had access to the internet back then and hence whatever was there in the college libraries was it. Rarely anyone had the money to books or the time to invest in an education at all. However today, you can access several copies of a play written by Sophocles from 400 BC Greece and read about not just the present but also about concept models of a distant future constructed by scientists and researchers. Even teachers have started opting for digital books and pdfs to teach in class in case someone does not have the book. Your point of reference has become limitless as it is perfectly up to the aptitude of the student to decide how much additional content he wants to read to prepare for an exam and if he should read at all.

2. Study and research
In the past, an on-field assignment could never be faked. In fact, an assignment could never be faked, copied, plagiarised even because everyone kept to their own business and their studies. Today, however, we can access millions of essays by millions of people who have no knowledge of our existence, much less the fact that we are copying their essays. The use of the internet in education has skyrocketed as information from practically any corner of the world is available to us in just a click and few searches. Students are less dependant on teachers today and some are even smarter than them. The purpose of a teacher has been reduced to being a mere catalyst to stimulate the growth of the student rather than being a core mentor.

3. Communication
A student who missed a lecture was at a huge loss back in the day because he would have to wait till the next working day to ask one of the classmates or the teacher to catch up on what had been taught the day before. Meanwhile, today it takes a simple Whatsapp message to ask your teacher or classmates about what you missed. Another common practice today is class Whatsapp groups with students and teachers as members where the teachers inform about lecture cancellations, additional lectures, extra readings for the next day’s lecture, etc. The communication gap between the students and teachers barely exists today.

4. Accessibility
In the current scenario, the doors to millions of books, movies, songs, online courses have been opened by universities, book stores, online streaming sites, etc. to help tackle boredom in this lockdown. The geographical limitations are negligible all thanks to the internet! The world has indeed become quite a small one. Students have been given the opportunity of a lifetime to tap into millions of online courses to help build their profiles. The internet has made something which was a dream before, one click away.