Healthier alternatives to the Internet
Sunday, 29 March 2009
Sifat Siddique
USING Internet for school assignments has become a regular, a natural thing to do now-a-days. Where there were days of spending weeks at public libraries and skimming through pages of encyclopedia, here comes the era of scrolling down web pages and printing out the results without even reading them!
Schools now-a-days give hoards of assignments to their students! Starting from Geography to English Literature, teachers give out huge amount of topics to the students! They just give the topics and that's it! No hints, nothing of how should the arrangement or the curriculum be and here you must submit the assignment! On time! And like they say, how it is told is how it is done! Students log on to google and type for their desired site and bingo! They just print out pages after pages, put an attractive front page, spiral bind it and submit! Assignment accomplished!!! This is both killing time for anything and working out for nothing! Assignments are usually meant for deeper and personal insights of issues that are important and well known. And educating oneself means absolutely knowing all of these. Sometimes even parents do their children's assignments because they also think that they are all about submitting and nothing about learning. Students should rather spend analysing their work and experimenting different data and information other than simply submitting nothing but papers!
The most popular website for information to students is Wikipedia. Wiki has become an irreplaceable means of doing class works as it can provide anything at anytime! Without any prior knowledge of what they are selecting, students just go for whatever is written in the Wiki. They take Wiki for granted! But much information provided by the Wiki is wrong, inconvenient and improper! Some historical mistakes in the Wiki are incorrigible! This is because Wiki is an open medium. Anyone can provide information over there with limited or no knowledge at all. We never get to know about this misinformation as we never compare. We just simply go for the Wiki. During old times, students could compare and verify information using different encyclopedia and biographical books. They could easily trace out crevices in information and clarify with teachers where confusion arose. These were true means of doing work and thus true attainment of knowledge.
Using Internet for studies can also ruin habits. We don't have to write anything, arrange or read! And all these are very important. If we use books for our work, we need to know which libraries are good for what, how to search out things and how to arrange them. Knowing what information are to be highlighted and what extras are to be added enhance additional creative power and instincts. Based on something that is truly original and incomparable is beyond satisfaction and true work! And every assignment is a personal portfolio!
Putting complete reliance on something for work is simply getting addicted to! And Internet mustn't be in any way that addiction.
USING Internet for school assignments has become a regular, a natural thing to do now-a-days. Where there were days of spending weeks at public libraries and skimming through pages of encyclopedia, here comes the era of scrolling down web pages and printing out the results without even reading them!
Schools now-a-days give hoards of assignments to their students! Starting from Geography to English Literature, teachers give out huge amount of topics to the students! They just give the topics and that's it! No hints, nothing of how should the arrangement or the curriculum be and here you must submit the assignment! On time! And like they say, how it is told is how it is done! Students log on to google and type for their desired site and bingo! They just print out pages after pages, put an attractive front page, spiral bind it and submit! Assignment accomplished!!! This is both killing time for anything and working out for nothing! Assignments are usually meant for deeper and personal insights of issues that are important and well known. And educating oneself means absolutely knowing all of these. Sometimes even parents do their children's assignments because they also think that they are all about submitting and nothing about learning. Students should rather spend analysing their work and experimenting different data and information other than simply submitting nothing but papers!
The most popular website for information to students is Wikipedia. Wiki has become an irreplaceable means of doing class works as it can provide anything at anytime! Without any prior knowledge of what they are selecting, students just go for whatever is written in the Wiki. They take Wiki for granted! But much information provided by the Wiki is wrong, inconvenient and improper! Some historical mistakes in the Wiki are incorrigible! This is because Wiki is an open medium. Anyone can provide information over there with limited or no knowledge at all. We never get to know about this misinformation as we never compare. We just simply go for the Wiki. During old times, students could compare and verify information using different encyclopedia and biographical books. They could easily trace out crevices in information and clarify with teachers where confusion arose. These were true means of doing work and thus true attainment of knowledge.
Using Internet for studies can also ruin habits. We don't have to write anything, arrange or read! And all these are very important. If we use books for our work, we need to know which libraries are good for what, how to search out things and how to arrange them. Knowing what information are to be highlighted and what extras are to be added enhance additional creative power and instincts. Based on something that is truly original and incomparable is beyond satisfaction and true work! And every assignment is a personal portfolio!
Putting complete reliance on something for work is simply getting addicted to! And Internet mustn't be in any way that addiction.