How Has the Internet Affected Education? Essay Example

The internet is a very important tool for research in the contemporary world. The influence of the internet has on both the learning and educational institutions are evidently and substantially great in terms of availing information and resources like online books. The internet has managed to infiltrate most if not every aspect of the human life. One of the major elements that currently changed the methods and tactics of teaching, learning and education is the internet social media. The number of students that are constantly using the famous search engines like Google, Yahoo or Bing increases on a day to day basis. Students prefer to use the internet as their main information source rather than go the library for research since it fast and responsive.

However, one has to ask, is this beneficial or advantageous in any way?  The use of social media in teaching various courses is becoming common, since implementing an online approach is teaching positive for fast information sharing. Additionally, the universities and colleges are now able to reach out and communicate to students even when they are different geographical locations. This has been achieved through appropriate social networking through internet applications designed and developed to aid in learning, for example, open source software for open and distance learning individuals.

In spite of the tendency or inclination of students to utilize their laptops, PCs or smart phones online gaming compared to research, the use of the Internet as an information research tool has demonstrated to be a constructive device for higher education. It is a powerful research instrument since it has made it conceivable for information and resource distribution on a worldwide scale. Subsequently, the internet has made it easier for the educational and learning institutions to acquire more resources like eBooks for its students. The internet as a learning tool has aided in the expansion of available resources while lessening the time that would be otherwise wasted on a location dependent learning institution. This learning or educational method generates a compelling technique that distance students can use to interact.

One other positive way that the internet helps education is that it offers free resources. The resources offered can be in various formats that conform to what a researcher might be looking for when searching for information online. The books or files that would have been practically difficult to access years ago can now be retrieved by just the click of a button on an internet web browser search engine using keyword searches.

The introduction of the internet into education has enabled researchers to access and use print books via a local library that uses technology or even preview it directly on online platform if copyright allows. Articles, books, PDFs, audio books and even videos that are not under copyright are freely accessible on the internet to support learning and education. The comparatively new services offered by high tech libraries around the world such as the Digital Public Library of America and the Internet Archive have made it possible for multimedia to be freely accessible to students.

None of the library conglomerates or groups would be in existence if the Internet was not in effective operation. Utilizing the internet as the main backbone for information transfer, communication and sharing has surely made and brought a lot of changes to learning and education. The evolution and growth of education has to be accredited to the introduction of the internet. It has made it conceivable to share course lesson plans with teachers belonging to the same institution.

The internet has enables higher learning institutions to offer online degrees. Additionally, the existence of free lesson sites that provide supplementary course materials has enabled universities and colleges to expand and complement the subjects or lessons they offer in almost any discipline.  Moreover, the Internet, if utilized well, can be great tool for inquiry-based teaching or learning.

The most appreciated attribute presented by the internet to education is speed. Speed often explains the effectiveness and efficiency that some institutions have over others. For instance, before the invention of the Web or internet, a scholar or learner had to refer to print indexes in order to find articles or nook. This meant that they had to go through one book after another, subsequently organizing and noting down terms on a different sheet of paper to help them come up with an appropriate relational search. This method of research could take hours, but with the instigation of internet technology this become faster and easier to perform in a matter of seconds.

The Internet makes both search speed and real-time updates a reality in the present world of education. Conclusively, the Internet has become an important tool for research in education by constantly depending on it for communication and information sharing. The positive effects that it has inflicted on the process of learning and education can be seen in most learning institutions today. The people who are trained to utilize internet technologies as a learning device will eventually discover how it is beneficial to creating self-awareness and education progress or growth at a faster pace.