essay on use of internet in education

Information: the Seed of Responsible Consumption (RC)

Teleworking, video conferences and plato’s cave, openmind books, scientific anniversaries, the eternal sound: from the phonograph to holophony, featured author, latest book, the internet and education, introduction.

In many ways, it is difficult to discuss any aspect of contemporary society without considering the Internet. Many people’s lives are saturated so thoroughly with digital technology that the once obvious distinction between either being  online  or  offline  now fails to do justice to a situation where the Internet is implicitly  always on . Indeed, it is often observed that younger generations are unable to talk about  the Internet  as a discrete entity. Instead, online practices have been part of young people’s lives since birth and, much like oxygen, water, or electricity, are assumed to be a basic condition of modern life. As Donald Tapscott (2009, 20) put it, “to them, technology is like the air.” Thus, in many ways, talking about  the Internet  and education simply means talking about contemporary  education . The Internet is already an integral element of education in (over)developed nations, and we can be certain that its worldwide educational significance will continue to increase throughout this decade.

That said, the educational impact of the Internet is not straightforward. At a rudimentary level, it is important to remember that well over half the world’s population has no direct experience of using  the Internet  at all. While this is likely to change with the global expansion of mobile telephony, the issue of unequal access to the most enabling and empowering forms of Internet use remains a major concern. Moreover—as the continued dominance of  traditional  forms of classroom instruction and paper-and-pencil examinations suggest—the educational changes being experienced in the Internet age are complex and often compromised. In addressing the topic of “the Internet and education” we therefore need to proceed with caution. As such, this chapter will consider the following questions:

• What are the potential implications of the Internet for education and learning?
• What dominant forms of Internet-based education have emerged over the past 20 years?
• How does the educational potential of the Internet relate to the realities of its use?
• Most importantly, how should we understand the potential gains and losses of what is being advanced?

The Internet as an Educational Tool

For many commentators, the Internet has always been an inherently educational tool. Indeed, many people would argue that the main characteristics of the Internet align closely with the core concerns of education. For instance, both the Internet  and  education are concerned with information exchange, communication, and the creation of knowledge.

The participatory, communal nature of many social Internet applications and activities is aligned closely with the fundamental qualities of how humans learn, not least the practices of creating, sharing, collaborating, and critiquing.

Thus, in light of the Internet’s capacity to allow these activities to take place on a vast and almost instantaneous scale, the educational implications of the Internet are understandably often described in grand terms. Take, for example, this recent pronouncement from Jeb Bush:

The Internet isn’t just a powerful tool for communication. It’s arguably the most potent force for learning and innovation since the printing press. And it’s at the center of what is possibly America’s mightiest struggle and greatest opportunity: How to reimagine education for a transformative era.

(Bush and Dawson 2013)

Beyond such hyperbole, the implications of the Internet for education and learning can be understood in at least four distinct ways. First, is the potential of the Internet to offer individual learners increased freedom from the physical limitations of the  real world . This is often expressed in terms of reducing constraints of place, space, time, and geography, with individuals able to access high-quality learning opportunities and educational provision regardless of local circumstances. The Internet is therefore portrayed as allowing education to take place on an  any time, any place, any pace  basis. Many commentators extend these  freedoms  into a transcendence of social and material disadvantage, with the Internet perceived as an inherently democratizing medium. The ability to support  freer  and  fairer educational interactions and experiences is seen to reflect the Internet’s underpinning qualities as “a radically democratic zone of infinite connectivity” (Murphy 2012, 122).

Secondly, the Internet is seen to support a  new culture of learning —i.e., learning that is based around  bottom-up  principles of collective exploration, play, and innovation rather than  top-down  individualized instruction (Thomas and Seely-Brown 2011). The Internet allows learning to take place on a  many-to-many  rather than  one-to-many  basis, thereby supporting  socio-constructivist  modes of learning and cognitive development that are profoundly social and cultural in nature. Many educators would consider learners to benefit from the socially rich environments that the Internet can support (see Luckin 2010). For example, it is often argued that the Internet offers individuals enhanced access to sources of knowledge and expertise that exist outside of their immediate environment. In this sense, there is now considerable interest in the ability of the Internet to support powerful forms of  situated learning  and digitally dispersed  communities of practice . The Internet is therefore seen as a powerful tool in supporting learning through  authentic  activities and interactions between people and extended social environments.

Thirdly, the capacity of the Internet to support a mass  connectivity  between people and information is felt to have radically altered the relationship between individuals and knowledge. It is sometimes argued that the Internet supports forms of knowledge creation and knowledge consumption that differ greatly from the epistemological presumptions of formal schooling and mass instruction. The networked relationships that Internet users have with online information have prompted wholesale reassessments of the nature of learning. Some educationalists are now beginning to advance ideas of  fluid intelligence  and  connectivism —reflecting the belief that learning via the Internet is contingent on the ability to access and use distributed information on a  just-in-time  basis. From this perspective,  learning  is understood as the ability to connect to specialized information nodes and sources as and when required. Thus being  knowledgeable  relates to the ability to nurture and maintain these connections (see Chatti, Jarke, and Quix 2010). As George Siemens (2004) puts it, learning can therefore be conceived in terms of the “capacity to know more” via the Internet rather than relating to the individual accumulation of prior knowledge in terms of “what is currently known.”

Fourthly, the Internet is seen to have dramatically  personalized  the ways in which people learn—thereby making education a far more individually determined process than was previously the case. The Internet is associated with an enhanced social autonomy and control, offering individuals increased choice over the nature and form of what they learn, as well as where, when, and how they learn it. Education is therefore a wholly controllable aspect of one’s personal life, with the Internet facilitating a  digital juggling  of educational engagement alongside daily activities and other commitments (Subrahmanyam and Šmahel 2011). Indeed, Internet users are often celebrated as benefiting from an enhanced capacity to self-organize and  curate  educational engagement for themselves, rather than relying on the norms and expectations of an education  system .

The Educational Implications of the Internet

All these various shifts and realignments clearly constitute a fundamental challenge to the  traditional  forms of educational provision and practice that were established throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, especially institutionalized modes of  formal  schooling and university education. For many commentators, therefore, the Internet contradicts the monopoly of state education systems and the vested interests of the professions that work within them. In all of the ways just outlined, the Internet would certainly seem to test established educational boundaries between  ex perts  and  novices , the production and consumption of knowledge, as well as the timing and location of learning. In terms of how education is provided, the Internet is associated with a range of radically different learning practices and altered social relations.

The Internet has certainly prompted ongoing debate and concern within the educational community. On one hand, many educationalists are busying themselves with rethinking and reimagining the notion of  the school  and  the university  in ways that respond to the demands of the Internet age. There have been various proposals over the past decade for the development of educational institutions that are better aligned with the characteristics of Internet-adept learners and online knowledge. As Collins and Halverson (2009, 129) put it, the task of reinventing schools and universities for the Internet age involves not only “rethinking what is important to learn” but also “rethinking learning.” This has seen modes of schooling being developed that are built around the communal creation (rather than individual consumption) of knowledge, in an attempt to imbue learning with a sense of play, expression, reflection, and exploration. The past ten years has seen a rash of ideas from enthusiastic educators proposing the development of new pedagogies and curricula built around social interaction, exploration,  gaming , and  making . All of these proposals for  school 2.0  reflect what Whitby (2013, 9–11) describes as  new models  of education provision based around “openness to learning and masterful tech-savvy.”

However, in contrast to these  re-schooling  proposals has been a countermovement to align the Internet with more radical forms of educational deinstitutionalization. These  de-schooling  arguments have proven popular with groups outside of the traditional  education establishment , framing the Internet as capable of usurping the need for educational institutions altogether. Key concepts here include self-determination, self-organization, self-regulation, and (in a neat twist on the notion of  do-it-yourself ) the idea of  do-it-ourselves . All these ideas align the Internet with a general rejection of institutionalized education—especially what has long been critiqued as the obsolete  banking model  of accumulating  knowledge content . Instead, Internet-based education is conceived along lines of open discussion, open debate, radical questioning, continuous experimentation, and the sharing of knowledge.

As with other aspects of digital activity, education is therefore imagined as something that is now open to reprogramming, modification, and hacking to better suit one’s individual needs.

As Dale Stephens (2013, 9) reasons:

The systems and institutions that we see around us—of schools, college, and work—are being systematically dismantled…. If you want to learn the skills required to navigate the world—the hustle, networking, and creativity—you’re going to have to hack your own education.

These are all highly contestable but highly seductive propositions. Indeed, whether one agrees with them or not, these arguments all highlight the fundamental challenge of the Internet to what was experienced throughout the past one hundred years or so as the dominant mode of education. It is therefore understandable that the Internet is now being discussed in terms of inevitable educational change, transformation, and the general  disruption  of twentieth-century models of education provision and practice. As the noted technology commentator Jeff Jarvis (2009, 210) concluded in an acclaimed overview of the Internet’s societal significance, “education is one of the institutions most deserving of disruption—and with the greatest opportunities to come of it.” Bold statements such as these are now being made with sufficient frequency and conviction that talk of an impending  digital disruption  of education is now rarely contested. Many people, therefore, see the prospect of the Internet completely reinventing education not as a matter of  if , but as a matter of  when .

Prominent Forms of Internet-Based Education

In the face of such forceful predictions of what  will  happen, it is perhaps sensible to take a step back and consider the realities of what has already happened with the Internet and education. As was suggested at the beginning of this chapter, amidst these grand claims of transformation and disruption, it is important to ask how the educational potential of the Internet is  actually  being realized in practice. In this sense, we should acknowledge that the Internet has been long used for educational purposes, and a number of prominent models of Internet-based education have emerged over the past 20 years. Perhaps the most established of these are various forms of what has come to be known as  e-learning —ranging from online courses through to virtual classrooms and even virtual schools. Many early forms of e-learning involved the predominantly one-way delivery of learning content, thereby replicating traditional  correspondence  forms of distance education. These programs (which continue to the present day) tend to rely on online content management systems, albeit supported by some form of interactivity in the form of e-mail, bulletin boards, and other communications systems. Alongside these forms of content delivery is the continued development of so-called virtual classrooms—usually spatial representations of classrooms or lecture theaters that can be  inhabited  by learners and teachers. Often these virtual spaces are designed to support synchronous forms of  live  instruction and feedback, with learners able to listen to lectures and view videos and visual presentations while also interacting with other learners via text and voice. Other asynchronous forms of virtual classroom exist in the form of digital spaces where resources can be accessed and shared—such as audio recordings and text transcripts of lectures, supplementary readings, and discussion forums. These forms of e-learning have continued to be developed since the 1990s, with entire  cyber schools  and online universities now well-established features of educational systems around the world.

While these examples of  e-learning  tend to replicate the basic structure and procedures of  bricks-and-mortar  schools and universities, a variety of other models of Internet-supported education have emerged over the past 20 years. One of the most familiar forms of Internet-based education is the collective  open  creation of information and knowledge, as exemplified by the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Despite ongoing debates over its accuracy and coverage, the educational significance of Wikipedia is considerable. As well as being a vast information resource, the ability of users to contribute and refine content is seen to make  wiki  tools such as Wikipedia a significant educational tool. The belief now persists amongst many educators that mass user-driven applications such as Wikipedia allow individuals to engage in learning activities that are more personally meaningful and more publically significant than was ever possible before. As John Willinsky (2009, xiii) reasons:

Today a student who makes the slightest correction to a Wikipedia article is contributing more to the state of public knowledge, in a matter of minutes, than I was able to do over the course of my entire grade school education, such as it was.

These characteristics of wiki tools correspond with the wider  Open Educational Resource  movement which is concerned with making professionally developed educational materials available online for no cost. In this manner, it is reckoned that content from almost 80 percent of courses at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are available on this free-to-use basis. Similar commitments can be found in institutions ranging from world-class universities such as Yale and Oxford to local community colleges. In all these cases, course materials such as seminar notes, podcasts, and videos of lectures are shared online with a worldwide population of learners, most of whom could otherwise not attend. Crucially (as with Wikipedia), the emphasis of Open Educational Resources is not merely permitting individuals to use provided materials, but encouraging the alteration and amendment of these resources as required. For example, the UK Open University’s extensive OpenLearn project provides free online access to all of the institution’s curriculum materials with an invitation for individual users to adapt these resources as they wish.

Other forms of online content sharing involve the open distribution of educational content that has been created by individuals as well as institutions. For example, the YouTube EDU service offers access to millions of educational videos produced by individual educators and learners. Similarly, Apple Computers’ collection of educational media—the so-called iTunes U—is designed to allow learners to circumvent traditional educational lectures and classes in favor of on-demand free mobile learning (Çelik, Toptaş, and Karaca 2012). Describing itself as “possibly the world’s greatest collection of free educational media available to students, teachers, and lifelong learners,” iTunes U offers free access to hundreds of thousands of educational audio and video podcast files. Most recently, there has been considerable praise for the Khan Academy’s online provision of thousands of bespoke educational videos alongside interactive quizzes and assessments covering a range of subject areas and topics. The aim of Khan Academy is to support individuals to learn at their own pace and to revisit learning content on a repeated basis. This so-called flipped classroom model is intended to allow individuals to engage with instructional elements of learning  before  entering a formal classroom. Face-to-face classroom time can be then be devoted to the practical application of the knowledge through problem solving, discovery work, project-based learning, and experiments (Khan 2012).

Another notable  open  example of Internet-based education has been the development of  MOOCs  (Massively Open Online Courses) over the past five years or so. Now, most notably through successful large-scale ventures such as Coursera and Ed-X, MOOCs involve the online delivery of courses on a free-at-the-point-of-contact basis to mass audiences. At its heart, the MOOC model is based on the idea of individuals being encouraged to learn through their own choice of online tools—what has been termed  personal learning networks —the collective results of which can be aggregated by the course coordinators and shared with other learners. This focus on individually directed discovery learning has proved especially appropriate to college-level education. Now it is possible for individuals of all ages to participate in mass online courses run by professors from the likes of Stanford, MIT, and Harvard universities in subjects ranging from a Yale elective in Roman architecture to a Harvard course in the fundamentals of neuroscience.

Another radical application of the Internet to support self-directed, non-institutional learning are initiatives such as the  hole-in-the-wall  and  School in the Cloud initiatives. These programs are built around an ethos of  minimally invasive education  where children and young people can access digital technology at any time, and teach themselves how to use computers and the Internet on an individually paced basis. The guiding ethos for the original hole-in-the-wall program was to locate Internet access in what Arora (2010, 691) characterizes as “out-of-the-way, out-of-the-mind locations” rather than in formal settings such as schools or universities. Indeed, the program’s credo of minimally invasive education is an avowedly non-institutionalized one, with children expected to engage with the Internet as an educative tool “free of charge and free of any supervision” (Mitra 2010). This approach is seen to be especially applicable to locations such as slum communities in India and Cambodia where Internet access is otherwise lacking. The recent elaboration of the initiative into the School in the Cloud marks an attempt to use online communication tools to allow older community members in high-income countries to act as mentors and  friendly but knowledgeable  mediators to young autonomous learners in lower-income communities. The provision of such access and support is therefore seen to underpin what the project team term “self-organized learning environments” and “self-activated learning”—thus providing an alternative “for those denied formal schooling” in low-income countries (Arora 2010, 700).

These programs, projects, and initiatives are indicative of the variety of ways in which education and the Internet have coalesced over the past 20 years. Yet perhaps the most significant forms of Internet-based education are the completely  informal  instances of learning that occur in the course of everyday Internet use. In this sense the Internet’s implicit support of various forms of  informal learning  could be seen as its most substantial educational impact (see Ünlüsoy et al. 2014). As the cultural anthropologist Mimi Ito has described, there are various different genres of everyday Internet-based practice that can be said to involve elements of learning (see Ito et al. 2009). At a basic level is the popular practice of using the Internet to simply  hang out  with others. Often these forms of  hanging out  can spill over into more focused instances of what Ito terms  messing around —i.e., activities that are interest-driven and more centered on peer sociability, often involving fortuitous searching, experimentation, and playing with resources. This messing around can then sometimes lead to the more intense commitment of what Ito has described as geeking out . These are bouts of concentrated and intense participation within defined communities of like-minded and similarly interested individuals driven by common and often specialized interests. In supporting all these forms of  learning , everyday use of the Internet can be seen as an inherently educational activity.

The Reality of the Internet and Education

These examples—and many more like them—are now seen as proof of the Internet’s growing contribution to what it means to learn and be educated in the twenty-first century. Undoubtedly, developments such as MOOCs, flipped classrooms, and self-organized learning could well turn out to be educational  game changers (Oblinger 2012). Yet the history of educational technology over the past one hundred years or so warns us that change is rarely as instantaneous  or  as totalizing as many people would like to believe. Indeed, the history of  modern  educational technologies (starting with Thomas Edison’s championing of educational filmstrips in the 1910s) has usually been characterized by sets of complex mutually shaping relationships between education and technology (see Cuban 1986). In other words,  new technologies rarely—if ever—have a direct one-way  impact  or predictable  effect  on education. Rather, established cultures and traditions of education also have a profound reciprocal influence on technologies. As the historian Larry Cuban (1993, 185) observed succinctly of the remarkable resilience of schools to the waves of successive technological developments throughout the 1980s and 1990s, “computer meets classroom—classroom wins.” In asking how the Internet is shaping education in the 2010s, we therefore need to also ask the corresponding question of how education is shaping the Internet.

From this perspective, it is not surprising to see the most successful forms of Internet-based education and  e-learning  being those that reflect and even replicate  pre-Internet  forms of education such as classrooms, lectures, and books. It is also not surprising to see the long-established  grammar  of formal education and educational institutions having a strong bearing on emerging forms of Internet-based education (Tyack and Cuban 1995). Take, for instance, the persistence of familiar practices such as dividing knowledge into distinct subject areas, using graded individual assessments, or relying on  expert  teachers. While understandable, these continuities certainly belie claims of radical transformation and disruption of the educational status quo. Thus in contrast to the revolutionary zeal of some commentators, it could be observed that the Internet is having most  impact  on education where it is  not  causing radically new patterns of participation or practice. For instance, rather than extending educational opportunities to those who previously were excluded, the recent rise of the MOOC in countries such as the U.S. and UK appears primarily to be supporting well-resourced, highly motivated, and already well-educated individuals to engage in more education (thereby replicating a trend referred to by some social commentators as the  Matthew Effect ). This is not to say that MOOCs are an insignificant form of education—however, it does suggest that their main  impact  is that of increasing rather than widening educational participation. Indeed, this view does imply that some of the more  radical  claims of social transformation and change that surround MOOCs (and other forms of Internet-based education) require careful consideration.

This leaves any attempts to predict the likely influence of the Internet on future forms of education on uncertain ground. Of course, it is unwise to adapt an overtly cynical view that there is nothing  new  about Internet-based education at all—i.e., that the educational effects of the Internet are simply a case of  old wine in new bottles . Yet it is equally unwise to presume that any of the examples given so far in the chapter necessarily herald a fundamental shift in education. The Internet is certainly associated with educational changes—yet these changes are complex, contradictory, convoluted and decidedly  messy .

In this respect, perhaps the most significant issues that need to be considered about the Internet and education are sociological, rather than technical, in nature.

In this sense, the Internet prompts a range of ideological questions (rather than purely technical answers) about the nature of education in the near future. Thus, as this chapter draws to a close we should move away from the optimistic speculation that pervades most educational discussions of the Internet. Instead, there are a number of important but less often acknowledged social, cultural, and political implications that also merit attention:

1.The Internet and the increased individualization of education

First, then, is the way in which Internet-based education promotes an implicit individualization of practice and action. The Internet is celebrated by many educationalists as increasing the responsibility of individuals in terms of making choices with regards to education, as well as dealing with the consequences of their choice. All the forms of Internet education outlined in this chapter demand increased levels of self-dependence on the part of the individual, with educational success dependent primarily on the individual’s ability to self-direct their ongoing engagement with learning through various preferred means. Of course, this is usually assumed to work in favor of the individual and to the detriment of formal institutions. Yet the idea of the self-responsibilized, self-determining learner is based upon an unrealistic assumption that all individuals have a capacity to act in an agentic, empowered fashion throughout the course of their day-to-day lives. In Bauman’s (2001) terms, the successful online learner is someone able to act as an empowered individual  de facto  rather than an individual  de jure  (i.e., someone who simply has individualism  done to  them). Of course, only a privileged minority of people are able to act in a largely empowered fashion. As such this individualization of action leads to education becoming an area of increased risk as well as opportunity.

These issues raise a number of important questions. For instance, just how equal are individuals in being able to make the educational  choices  that the Internet actually offers? How are the apparent educational freedoms of the Internet resulting in enhanced  unfreedoms  (such as the intensification and extension of educational  work  into domestic settings)? To what extent are  personalized  forms of Internet education simply facilitating the  mass customization  of homogenous educational services and content? What is the nature of the collective forms of Internet-based education? How do  communities  of learners established through the Internet differ in terms of social diversity, obligation, or solidarity? Is the Internet undermining or even eroding notions of education as a public good?

2. The Internet and the growth of data-driven education

Another significant issue related to the increased educational significance of the Internet is the ways in which online data and information are now defining, as well as describing, social life. The Internet has certainly extended the significance of databases, data mining, analytics, and algorithms, with organizations and institutions functioning increasingly through the ongoing collection, aggregation, and (re)analysis of data. Crucially, the Internet allows this  data work  to take place on a mass, aggregated scale. We are now seen to be living in an era of  Big Data  where computerized systems are making available “massive quantities of information produced by and about people, things, and their interactions” (Boyd and Crawford 2012, 662).

The collection and analysis of online data is now a key aspect of how actions are structured and decisions are made in many areas of education. Now, for example, masses of online data are being generated, collected, and collated as a result of the Internet-based activities that take place within educational institutions—ranging from  in-house  monitoring of system conditions to the  public  collection of data at local, state, and federal levels. These data are used for a variety of purposes—including internal course administration, target setting, performance management, and student tracking. Similar processes and practices exist in terms of use of data  across  educational systems—from student databases to performance  league tables . There are, of course, many potential advantages to the heightened significance of online data. There has been much recent enthusiasm for the potential of  learning analytics —i.e., “the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of data about learners and their contexts, for purposes of understanding and optimizing learning and the environments in which it occurs” (Siemens et al. 2011, 4). Similarly, there is growing discussion of  educational data mining  and  academic analytics . All of these uses of digital data are seen to lead to more efficient and transparent educational processes, as well as supporting individuals to self-monitor and  self-diagnose  their learning (Eynon 2013).

Yet, there is a clear need for caution amidst these potential advantages—not least how the increased prevalence of online data in education is implicated in the shaping of what people can and cannot do. For example, how are individuals and their learning being represented by data collected online? How does the Internet support the connection, aggregation, and use of these data in ways not before possible? To what extent are individuals’ educational engagements now being determined by  data profiles ? How are these online data being used in forms of  predictive surveillance  where educators and educational institutions use data relating to past performance and behavior to inform expectations of future behaviors? What aspects of educational engagement are  not  represented in the online data being collected and analyzed?

3. The Internet and the increased commercialization and privatization of education

Thirdly, is the need to recognize the role of commercial and private actors in the growth of Internet-based education. Indeed, the role of the private sector is integral to many of the forms of Internet-based education described in this chapter. For example, it is estimated that the global education/technology market is worth upwards of $7 trillion, with burgeoning levels of private capital investment in online education. A range of multinational commercial interests such as Pearson, Cengage, and McGraw-Hill are now involved heavily in the business of e-learning and online provision of teaching and training—competing with countless smaller commercial concerns and a range of nonprofit organizations. Clearly Internet-based education marks a distinct move away from a  planned economy  model where education provision is largely the preserve of state-run, public-sector institutions (see Picciano and Spring 2013).

Of course, the increased involvement of commercial interests in online education could be seen to have many potential benefits. The private sector is able to focus considerable technological resources and expertise on educational issues. It is often assumed that commercially provided education is more responsive to the demands of its  customers —be it the immediate preferences of learners or the longer-term workforce requirements of business and industry. Moreover, as Chubb and Moe (2012) reason, improvement can arise from market competition between private and public education providers: “in time, [for-profit institutions] may do amazing things with computerized instruction—imagine equivalents of Apple or Microsoft, with the right incentives to work in higher education—and they may give elite nonprofits some healthy competition in providing innovative, high-quality content.” Indeed, the appeal of many of the forms of Internet-based education described in this chapter is predicated upon bringing the innovation of the private sector to bear on the inefficiencies of public education. As Sebastian Thrun (the computer scientist credited with the popularization of the MOOC concept) argued recently: “Education is broken. Face it. It is so broken at so many ends, it requires a little bit of Silicon Valley magic” (Wolfson 2013).

Yet the possibilities for commercial innovation and  magic  notwithstanding, there are a number of reasons to challenge the growing influence of private interests in shaping education agendas in these ways. For example, how committed are IT producers and vendors to the public good of educational technology above and beyond matters of profit and market share? Given that education is an integral element in determining the life chances of the most vulnerable members of society, how appropriate is a Silicon Valley, venture-capitalist mindset of high-risk  start-ups  with expected high rates of failure? What are the moral and ethical implications of reshaping education along the lines of market forces and commercial values? Why should education correspond automatically with the needs of the digital economy?

4. The Internet and the changing values of education

Finally—and perhaps less tangibly—there is also a sense that the Internet might be altering the psychological, emotional, and spiritual bases of education. For example, many of the forms of online education discussed in this chapter imply an increased expansion of education into unfamiliar areas of society and social life—leading to an  always-on  state of potential educational engagement. Indeed, the  anytime, anyplace  nature of online education clearly involves the expansion of education and learning into domestic, work, and community settings where education and learning might previously have not been prominent. There are clear parallels here with what Basil Bernstein (2001) identified as the “total pedagogization of society”—i.e., a modern society that ensures that pedagogy is integrated into all possible spheres of life. This raises questions of what is perhaps lost when one is able to engage with education at all times of the day and in all contexts? Is there something to be said for being able to disconnect from the pressures of education? Is learning best suited to some contexts and circumstances than others?

Many of the forms of online education described in this chapter could also be said to frame learning (often inadvertently) as a competitive endeavor. Thus in contrast to allowing individuals to learn harmoniously alongside others, the Internet could be seen as placing individuals in “personal formative cycles, occupied in unison within individual feedback-action loops. They learn to become industrious self-improvers, accepting and implementing external goals” (Allen 2011, 378). Thus while a sense of achievement at the expense of others may not be immediately apparent, the Internet could be seen as a means of humanizing, disguising, and intensifying the competitive connotations of learning. Continuing this line of thinking, the partial, segmented, task-orientated, fragmented, and discontinuous nature of online education could perhaps even be seen as a form of  spiritual alienation —i.e., alienation at the level of meaning, where  conditions of good work  become detached from the  conditions of good character  (Sennett 2012).

All these points also relate to the correspondences between the Internet and the altered emotional aspects of educational engagement. In particular, many of the forms of Internet-based education described earlier in this chapter (such as the virtual school or the MOOC) could be said to involve learning being experienced on less immediate, less intimate, and perhaps more instrumental grounds. These points were explored in Jonathan Wolff’s (2013) recent reflections on what might be lost when a lecture takes place online as opposed to in a face-to-face lecture theater. While these diminishments are often difficult to pinpoint, Wolff suggested qualities such as the immediacy, the serendipity, and the  real-ness of the live experience  of learning alongside other people. Certainly, the remote, virtual sense of learning online is qualitatively different to the embodied sense of face-to-face learning—both in advantageous and disadvantageous ways.

Conclusions

Whether one agrees with any of these latter arguments or not, it is clear that the topic of “the Internet and education” needs to be approached in a circumspect manner. The predominantly optimistic rhetoric of transformation and change that currently surrounds the Internet and education distracts from a number of significant conflicts and tensions that need to be better acknowledged and addressed. This is not to say that we should adopt a wholly antagonistic  or  wholly pessimistic stance. Indeed, many of the  issues  just outlined should not be assumed automatically to be cause for concern. There are, after all, many people who will be advantaged by more individualized, elitist, competitive, market-driven, omnipresent, and de-emotionalized forms of educational engagement. The Internet clearly works for the millions of people who are learning online at this very moment.

Yet while it may well be that the Internet is helping  some  individuals to engage with education in more convenient, engaging, and useful ways, we would do well to acknowledge that this is unlikely to be the case for all. Any Internet-led changes in education are accompanied by a variety of unintended consequences,  second-order effects , and unforeseen implications. Perhaps the most important point to consider is the well-worn tendency of digital technology to reinforce existing patterns of educational engagement—helping already engaged individuals to participate further, but doing little to widen participation or reengage those who are previously disengaged. In particular, any discussion of the educational  potential  of the Internet needs to remain mindful of the limited usefulness of a  technical-fix  approach to understanding contemporary education. The Internet should not be seen as a ready  solution  to apparent inefficiencies of  twentieth-century  education institutions or practices—it will not lead automatically to more engaged or motivated learners, more highly skilled workforces, or rising levels of national intelligence and innovation. Instead, it is likely that many of the  problems  of contemporary education are primarily social and cultural in nature, and therefore require social and cultural responses.

As such, while there is plenty of scope for the increased use of the Internet within education, any claims for  change  and  improvement  should be seen as contentious and debatable matters, rather than inevitable trends that educators have no choice but to adapt to. To reiterate a key theme that has emerged throughout our discussion, underlying all of the issues raised in this chapter are questions of what sort of future education one believes in. As such, the role of the Internet in improving ,  transforming ,  or even disrupting  education is a deeply complex and ideologically loaded matter that goes well beyond technical issues of how to personalize the delivery of educational content, or support the production and consumption of online content. The future of education may well involve increased use of the Internet—but will not be determined by it.

Allen, Ansgar. “Michael Young’s  The Rise of the Meritocracy : A Philosophical Critique.”  British Journal of Educational Studies  59, no. 4 (2001): 367–82.

Arora, Payal. “Hope-in-the-Wall? A Digital Promise for Free Learning.”  British Journal of Educational Technology  41 (2010): 689–702.

Bauman, Zygmunt. The Individualized Society . Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2001.

Bernstein, Basil. “From Pedagogies to Knowledges.” In Ana Morais, Isabel Neves, Brian Davies, and Harry Daniels, eds.,  Towards a Sociology of Pedagogy: The Contribution of Basil Bernstein to Research . New York: Peter Lang, 2001. 363–68.

Boyd, Danah, and Kate Crawford. “Critical Questions for Big Data.”  Information, Communication, & Society  15, no. 5 (2012): 662–79.

Bush, Jeb, and Rosario Dawson. “Internet Brings Historic Shift in Learning.”  Miami Herald , June 25, 2013.  http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/06/25/3470108/internet-brings-historic-shift.html#storylink=cpy  (accessed September 6, 2013).

Çelik, Serkan, Veli Toptaş, and Tuğçe Karaca. “iTunes University: Potentials and Applications.”  Procedia—Social and Behavioral Sciences  64 (2012): 412–16.

Chatti, Mohammed Amine, Matthias Jarke, and Christoph Quix. “Connectivism: The Network Metaphor of Learning.”  International Journal of Learning Technology  5, no. 1 (February 15, 2010): 80–99.

Chubb, John, and Terry Moe. “Higher education’s online revolution”  Wall Street Journal , May 30, 2012. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304019404577416631206583286.html  (accessed September 6, 2013).

Collins, Allan, and Richard Halverson. Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology . New York: Teachers College Press, 2009.

Cuban, Larry. Teachers and Machines: The Classroom Use of Technology Since 1920 . New York: Teachers College Press, 1986.

———. “Computer Meets Classroom: Classroom Wins”  Teachers College Record  95, no. 2 (1993): 185–210.

Eynon, Rebecca. “The Rise of Big Data: What Does It Mean for Education, Technology, and Media Research?”  Learning, Media and Technology  38, no. 3 (2013).

Ito, Mizuko, Sonja Baumer, Matteo Bittanti, Danah Boyd, Rachel Cody, Becky Herr-Stephenson, Heather A. Horst et al. Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009.

Jarvis, Jeff. What Would Google Do?  London: Collins, 2009.

Khan, Salman. The One World Schoolhouse . London: Hodder, 2012.

Luckin, Rosemary. Re-designing Learning Contexts: Technology-Rich, Learner-centred Ecologies . London: Routledge, 2010.

Mitra, Sugata. “Give Them a Laptop and a Group of Pupils Will Teach Themselves.”  Guardian , Educational Supplement, October 19, 2010.

Murphy, Douglas. The Architecture of Failure . Winchester, UK: Zero, 2012.

Oblinger, Diana G. Game Changers: Education and Information Technologies . Washington, D.C.: Educause, 2012.

Picciano, Anthony G., and Joel Spring. The Great American Education-Industrial Complex: Ideology, Technology and Profit . London: Routledge, 2013.

Sennett, Richard. Together: The Ritual, Pleasures and Politics of Cooperation . London: Allen Lane, 2012.

Siemens, George. “Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age,” eLearnSpace, December 12, 2004.  http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism.htm  (accessed September 6, 2013).

Siemens, George, Dragan Gašević, Caroline Haythornthwaite, Shane Dawson, Simon Buckingham Shum, Rebecca Ferguson, Erik Duval, Katrien Verbert, and Ryan S. J. d. Baker. Open Learning Analytics . N.p.: Society for Learning Analytics Research, 2011.

Stephens, Dale J. Hacking Your Education . London: Penguin Press, 2013.

Subrahmanyam, Kaveri, and David Šmahel, Digital Youth: The Role of Media in Development . Berlin: Springer, 2011.

Tapscott, Don. Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World . New York: McGraw Hill, 2009.

Thomas, Douglas, and Seely Brown, John. A New Culture of Learning . Charleston, SC: Createspace, 2011.

Tyack, David, and Cuban, Larry. Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995.

Ünlüsoy, Asli, Mariëtte de Haan, Kevin Leander, and Beate Volker. “Learning Potential in Youth’s Online Networks.”  Computers & Education  (forthcoming, 2014).

Whitby, Greg. Educating Gen Wi-Fi: How We Can Make Schools Relevant for 21st Century Leaders . Sydney: Harper Collins, 2013.

Willinsky, John. “Forward” in Charalambos Vrasidas, Michalinos Zembylas, and Gene V. Glass, eds.,  ICT for Education, Development and Social Justice . Charlotte, NC: Information Age, 2009. XI-XIV.

Wolff, Jonathan. “It’s Too Early to Write Off the Lecture.”  Guardian , June 25, 2013.  http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2013/jun/24/university-lecture-still-best-learning (accessed September 6, 2013).

Wolfson, Lisa. “Venture Capital Needed for ‘Broken’ US Education, Thrun Says.”  Bloomberg Businessweek , June 18, 2013.  http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-06-18/venture-capital-needed-for-broken-u-dot-s-dot-education-thrun-says  (accessed September 6, 2013).

Related publications

• Futures of Education for Rapid Global-Societal Change
• The Internet Plays a Major Role within the Education System
• E-learning 2.0 for Higher Education: A Forward Perspective

Download Kindle

Download epub, download pdf, more publications related to this article, more about technology, artificial intelligence, digital world, visionaries, comments on this publication.

Morbi facilisis elit non mi lacinia lacinia. Nunc eleifend aliquet ipsum, nec blandit augue tincidunt nec. Donec scelerisque feugiat lectus nec congue. Quisque tristique tortor vitae turpis euismod, vitae aliquam dolor pretium. Donec luctus posuere ex sit amet scelerisque. Etiam sed neque magna. Mauris non scelerisque lectus. Ut rutrum ex porta, tristique mi vitae, volutpat urna.

Sed in semper tellus, eu efficitur ante. Quisque felis orci, fermentum quis arcu nec, elementum malesuada magna. Nulla vitae finibus ipsum. Aenean vel sapien a magna faucibus tristique ac et ligula. Sed auctor orci metus, vitae egestas libero lacinia quis. Nulla lacus sapien, efficitur mollis nisi tempor, gravida tincidunt sapien. In massa dui, varius vitae iaculis a, dignissim non felis. Ut sagittis pulvinar nisi, at tincidunt metus venenatis a. Ut aliquam scelerisque interdum. Mauris iaculis purus in nulla consequat, sed fermentum sapien condimentum. Aliquam rutrum erat lectus, nec placerat nisl mollis id. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.

Nam nisl nisi, efficitur et sem in, molestie vulputate libero. Quisque quis mattis lorem. Nunc quis convallis diam, id tincidunt risus. Donec nisl odio, convallis vel porttitor sit amet, lobortis a ante. Cras dapibus porta nulla, at laoreet quam euismod vitae. Fusce sollicitudin massa magna, eu dignissim magna cursus id. Quisque vel nisl tempus, lobortis nisl a, ornare lacus. Donec ac interdum massa. Curabitur id diam luctus, mollis augue vel, interdum risus. Nam vitae tortor erat. Proin quis tincidunt lorem.

How the Internet Has Changed Everyday Life

Do you want to stay up to date with our new publications.

Receive the OpenMind newsletter with all the latest contents published on our website

OpenMind Books

• The Search for Alternatives to Fossil Fuels
• View all books

About OpenMind

Connect with us.

• Keep up to date with our newsletter

Quote this content

• Undergraduate
• High School
• Architecture
• American History
• Asian History
• Antique Literature
• American Literature
• Asian Literature
• Classic English Literature
• World Literature
• Creative Writing
• Linguistics
• Criminal Justice
• Legal Issues
• Anthropology
• Archaeology
• Political Science
• World Affairs
• African-American Studies
• East European Studies
• Latin-American Studies
• Native-American Studies
• West European Studies
• Family and Consumer Science
• Social Issues
• Women and Gender Studies
• Social Work
• Natural Sciences
• Pharmacology
• Earth science
• Agriculture
• Agricultural Studies
• Computer Science
• IT Management
• Mathematics
• Investments
• Engineering and Technology
• Engineering
• Aeronautics
• Medicine and Health
• Alternative Medicine
• Communications and Media
• Advertising
• Communication Strategies
• Public Relations
• Educational Theories
• Teacher's Career
• Chicago/Turabian
• Company Analysis
• Education Theories
• Shakespeare
• Canadian Studies
• Food Safety
• Relation of Global Warming and Extreme Weather Condition
• Movie Review
• Admission Essay
• Annotated Bibliography
• Application Essay
• Article Critique
• Article Review
• Article Writing
• Book Review
• Business Plan
• Business Proposal
• Capstone Project
• Cover Letter
• Creative Essay
• Dissertation
• Dissertation - Abstract
• Dissertation - Conclusion
• Dissertation - Discussion
• Dissertation - Hypothesis
• Dissertation - Introduction
• Dissertation - Literature
• Dissertation - Methodology
• Dissertation - Results
• GCSE Coursework
• Grant Proposal
• Marketing Plan
• Multiple Choice Quiz
• Personal Statement
• Power Point Presentation
• Power Point Presentation With Speaker Notes
• Questionnaire
• Reaction Paper

Research Paper

• Research Proposal
• SWOT analysis
• Thesis Paper
• Online Quiz
• Literature Review
• Movie Analysis
• Statistics problem
• Math Problem
• All papers examples
• How It Works
• Money Back Policy
• Terms of Use
• Privacy Policy
• We Are Hiring

Affect of Internet on Education, Essay Example

Pages: 4

Words: 1233

Hire a Writer for Custom Essay

Use 10% Off Discount: "custom10" in 1 Click 👇

You are free to use it as an inspiration or a source for your own work.

Technology has continually grown throughout time.  A decade ago, students had to use books instead of Google.  There was no option to search the internet in order to find references to back up their ideas or prove their thesis.  Now everything is available via the internet.  Classes are even available to be taken online, instead of the traditional classroom setting.  Books, newspapers, and journals are all available online as well.  The internet is even used in classroom teaching for broader and more thorough learning experiences.  The internet has had a positive effect on education at every level.

Education has changed drastically from a few decades ago.  Technology has made it so that individuals have the resources to get a better education.  It went from the teacher being the only one with books, and the students writing the dictation to printing presses that mass produced text books.  This allowed students to read and study on their own, forming their own opinions instead of the one that was told by the teacher.  Typewriters, word processors, computers, and printers all paved the way for the computer age that we are in today.  The way that classroom teaching has changed as a result of these technology advances as well.

Some technology that has been around for a while and often taken for granted is things like the printer, where papers can be handed out for individual learning.  Text books for every student to be able to read and study on their own.  Other simple things like paper, pens, and libraries to aid in the learning process as well.  These simple things are often taken for granted because we have grown use to having the same resources all wrapped up into a computer monitor.  They still serve an important part in the educational process, however because they have been around so long, the appreciation is gone.

Internet has been a positive influence on the way that we read, write, think, and interact with others.   A good education is dependent on all of these factors.  “Learning is the act or process of developing skill or knowledge. Modern, web-based learning and computing provides the means for fundamentally changing the way in which instruction is delivered to students. “(Arsham 2002) It is the same concept, teaching the student to read, write, think, and interact with others; however it provides additional information to make this learning experience even better.   The only thing that has changed is the method that the information is delivered to the students instead.   And maybe the amount of information, there is a much more in depth availability of information on the internet than in a text book.

There are many benefits to technology. The speed and availability of information is continually growing.  “When presented with random facts, participants in the study who believed the information would be lost after they read it scored much higher on the quizzes that asked them to recall the facts than those participants who thought they could access the information later. Interestingly, she also found that most people immediately turn to the internet when they are presented with a question to which they don’t know the answer.” (Sparrow 2011)  A continual resource to build knowledge and information is important in with learning.  The biggest benefit is the internet is available 24/7 making it easy to educate oneself at any time.

The benefits of technology do not go without disadvantages.   When students always turn to technology, such as the internet, they do not know what to do when the internet is unavailable.  They also can take others ideas and make them their own instead of researching and doing the work on their own.  There are also a lot of distractions that can come up with technology as well.  Social networks, chatting with friends, and searching the web for completely unrelated things can hinder the education process too.  Monitoring the usage of technology can make sure that it is being used to help with ones education, not hinder it.

People typically react positively to technology.  They accept the changes because most of the time they are created to make life easier for everyone.  “Throughout history, information has been a powerful tool that guides society and also defines social places with in that society. In ancient times, the clergy and the wealthy were the only ones that had access to written documents. The invention of the printing press helped to spread the collected knowledge to more people. As information was shared, society changed from predominately agrarian to industrial.” (Exploring 2007)  It further shows the positive progression that technology has provided.  This is why it has been so well accepted, because it is made to make life better and easier.

Technology can adapt to facilitate literacy practices while avoiding the problems associated with it.  This can be done by using setting standards when it comes to using technology.  For example, computers that are used in classrooms can be blocked from free usage and only allow access to educational sites and searches.  This will provide the technological advantage while preventing the negatives that are associated with it.  Another example is online classes, blocking the availability to toggle back and forth while in the classroom will keep the student in the classroom for the required amount of time.  These are just a few ideas that will keep technology beneficial without the negative side.

There is no limitation to how technology will change learning and education.  “There is the ease of reaching out without the limitations. It is not only limited to that, thousands of schools across the world have integrated the traditional way of instruction with the learning through the Internet. Children often surf through sites for supplementing information available in the textbooks, to read extensively on the topics that interest them and also to aid project works they are required to do.” (The Impact 2010)  This just shows that technology has continued to help students in their learning process.

The next step is to continue to guide technology to aid in the learning process.  Through continual review and revision it can make sure that all the resources help the students learn instead of creating obstacles. There are good and bad that go along with every change.  It is necessary to manage the good and prevent the bad to ensure the success of the said change.   Going forward, technology will continue to improve and provide even better resources for the students.

The internet has had a positive effect on education at every level. Technology continually improves the ability to learn new things and use new resources.  Research has reported both good and bad with internet usages as a means of teaching.  The change that has happened over the past decades has been good and will continue to be good.   Some technology that we are accustom to is often taken for granted with its usefulness.  Overall the internet has had a positive effect on how we read, write, and learn.  Technology and the internet will continue to improve and aid in the overall educational experience.   There is a lot more good than bad when it comes to internets effect on education.

Arsham, Professor Hossein. “Impact of the Internet on Learning and Teaching”.  USDLA Journal, 2002 .   ISSN 1537-5080 Vol. 16 No. 3.  Print.

Sparrow, Betsy. “Interview”.  Columbia University , 2011. Print.

“Exploring the Ever-Changing Technical Landscape that Teacher Face Everyday”. EduTechLife , 2007.  Print.

“The Impact of the Internet on Education”.  Everything Jobs and Education , 2010.  Print.

Stuck with your Essay?

Get in touch with one of our experts for instant help!

Poverty and Pollution, Essay Example

Cost Effective vs. Quality Effective Choices in Health Care, Research Paper Example

Time is precious

don’t waste it!

Plagiarism-free guarantee

Privacy guarantee

Secure checkout

Money back guarantee

Related Essay Samples & Examples

Voting as a civic responsibility, essay example.

Pages: 1

Words: 287

Utilitarianism and Its Applications, Essay Example

Words: 356

The Age-Related Changes of the Older Person, Essay Example

Pages: 2

Words: 448

The Problems ESOL Teachers Face, Essay Example

Pages: 8

Words: 2293

Should English Be the Primary Language? Essay Example

Words: 999

The Term “Social Construction of Reality”, Essay Example

Words: 371

Essay on Use of Internet in Education

Students are often asked to write an essay on Use of Internet in Education in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Use of Internet in Education

The internet and education.

The internet is a vast source of information that aids in education. It provides students with a plethora of resources, from e-books to online courses.

The internet makes learning interactive, engaging, and fun. It allows students to access information anytime, anywhere, expanding their knowledge beyond textbooks.

However, the internet also poses challenges like misinformation and distractions. Therefore, it’s crucial to use it wisely.

In conclusion, the internet is a valuable tool in education. It enhances learning, making it more dynamic and versatile.

250 Words Essay on Use of Internet in Education

Introduction.

The Internet, a global network of interconnected computers, has revolutionized the educational landscape. It has emerged as a powerful tool for learning, teaching, and research.

Online Learning Platforms

Online learning platforms have facilitated a shift from traditional classroom-based learning to a more flexible, self-paced approach. Websites like Coursera, Khan Academy, and edX provide a plethora of courses from renowned universities worldwide. They offer an interactive environment, with video lectures, quizzes, peer-reviewed assignments, and discussion forums.

Educational Resources

The Internet is a treasure trove of educational resources. Digital libraries, online journals, and educational websites provide access to a vast amount of information, enhancing research capabilities. Tools like Google Scholar and JSTOR have made academic research more accessible and efficient.

Collaborative Learning

The Internet fosters collaborative learning. Platforms like Google Classroom and Microsoft Teams enable students to work together on projects, share ideas, and get instant feedback from teachers. Such collaboration enhances critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

Challenges and Conclusion

However, the use of the Internet in education also poses challenges. These include digital divide, privacy concerns, and the risk of misinformation. Despite these challenges, the benefits are significant. The Internet has democratized education, making it more accessible and inclusive. It has transformed the way we learn, teach, and conduct academic research. As we move towards a more digitalized world, the role of the Internet in education is only set to increase.

500 Words Essay on Use of Internet in Education

The evolution of the internet in education.

The advent of the internet has revolutionized various sectors of society, with education being one of the most profoundly impacted. The internet has transformed the traditional classroom-based education system into a more dynamic and interactive process, expanding the boundaries of learning beyond physical infrastructure.

Internet as a Repository of Information

The internet has emerged as a vast repository of knowledge, providing access to a plethora of information on a multitude of subjects. It has democratized education, enabling students from all walks of life to access resources that were previously unavailable or unaffordable. Online libraries, academic journals, and educational websites offer a wealth of knowledge that can supplement classroom learning.

Online learning platforms have emerged as a significant facet of internet-based education. Websites like Coursera, Khan Academy, and edX offer courses from top universities worldwide, allowing students to learn at their own pace. These platforms use interactive tools like video lectures, quizzes, and discussion forums to provide a comprehensive learning experience. They also offer certification upon course completion, adding value to the learner’s profile.

Collaborative Learning and Global Connectivity

The internet has fostered a global learning community by enabling students and educators worldwide to collaborate. Online discussion forums, social media platforms, and collaborative tools like Google Docs allow for real-time interaction and collaboration. This global connectivity broadens perspectives, promotes cultural exchange, and enhances problem-solving skills by exposing students to diverse viewpoints.

Adaptive Learning and Personalization

The use of artificial intelligence and machine learning in education has led to the advent of adaptive learning systems. These systems use data about a student’s performance and learning style to personalize content, pace, and teaching methods. This level of personalization, facilitated by the internet, ensures a more effective and efficient learning process tailored to the individual’s needs.

Challenges and the Way Forward

Despite its numerous advantages, the use of the internet in education also presents challenges. These include the digital divide, data privacy concerns, and the quality of online resources. Addressing these challenges requires a concerted effort from educators, policymakers, and tech companies.

In conclusion, the internet has significantly impacted education, making it more accessible, interactive, and personalized. As we navigate the digital age, it is crucial to leverage the potential of the internet while mitigating its challenges to create a more equitable and effective education system.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

• Essay on Use of Internet
• Essay on Use of Dictionary and Word Power
• Essay on Use of Computer in Daily Life

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

Happy studying!

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

• Open access
• Published: 05 October 2016

The Internet and Online Pedagogy Editorial

• Begoña Gros 1 ,
• Cristóbal Suárez-Guerrero 2 &
• Terry Anderson 3  

International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education volume  13 , Article number:  38 ( 2016 ) Cite this article

3506 Accesses

11 Citations

10 Altmetric

Metrics details

Characterising the challenges of pedagogy on the internet is a very complex task. An interdisciplinary approach is useful when studying the educational process in order to present and represent the multitudinal bases that underpin educational change. We liv in an era marked by online activity —or indeed hyperactivity. Thus we require pedagogical representation models that incorporate diverse educational values and include patterns of action that raise awareness of the educational dilemmas surrounding the innovative. The full use of the internet’s potential, requires designs and demands of new training needs and analysis and must allow for the many technological trends that impact educational challenges in both the medium and long term. In short, whatever the case, pedagogy should draw on reflection and research to continue re-constructing itself.

Pedagogy on the internet is not necessarily a new form of pedagogy. It faces the challenge of understanding and effectively addressing educational challenges and opportunities by relying on its tradition in campus based contexts, its extended reach and the evidence provided by ongoing research. Today’s pedagogy must coordinate and offer insights into these new forms of educational representation. It is not enough to offer a mechanical response based solely on technological affordances.

“Why talk only about the internet in education when we could talk about pedagogy in general?” This was the initial question that inspired the editors of this special issue. One way to address this task was to select studies that apply pedagogical reflection to the educational problems and opportunities raised by the internet, as well as to enrich this reflection with interdisciplinary empirical evidence.

The articles that make up this monographic contain both answers and questions - we introduce each study by presenting a problem or question. The aim of this format is, in addition to being pedagogical, to raise issues that open up educational debate.

In ‘Pedagogic dilemmas to flows of knowledge in the age of digital technology’, Ángel San Martin and Ángel García del Dujo launch their analysis by asking “Is there any room for pedagogy in an environment where technology already forms an implicit part of teaching design and development?” In other words, the process of educational appropriation of technological functionality calls for a heuristic approach to better understand the pedagogical dilemmas and affordances encountered in the educational use of technology.

Given the interest and use of educational technologies and consequent interest by researchers, it is often challenging to isolate the major issues that have been or can be addressed by academic research. Meta-analysis techniques attempt to build a concise map of this research terrain. In ‘Meta-analysis of research in e-learning published in Spanish journals’, Julio Cabero-Almenara, Verónica Marín Díaz and Begoña Sampedro-Requena ask “What are the main issues being addressed by educational research centred on studying the different variables of e-learning in Spanish scientific production over the past 5 years?” That is to say, what are the most popular subjects for educational investigators in e-learning, what are the characteristics of the researchers working in these areas and which topics are yet to be developed?

In ‘Pedagogies for the open knowledge society’, Paola Ricaurte tackles the question “Are the structure and organisation of online educational programmes marked by a particular technical condition?” In other words, learning on an educational platform involves more than just learning using a neutral technological system, it involves models of representation of specific knowledge, values and action that must be visible in pedagogical models.

In ‘From massive access to cooperation: lessons learned and proven results of a hybrid xMOOC/cMOOC pedagogical approach to MOOCs’, Ángel Fidalgo Blanco, María Luisa Sein-Echaluce and Francisco J García-Peñalvo seek to answer the question “Can cooperation among participants be the pedagogical value that reverses the drop-out trend in MOOCs?” In other words, beyond the type of platform, the quality of learning involves other challenges than just good teaching and the efficient distribution of content in MOOCs.

In ‘Virtual empathy as digital competence in education 3.0’, Rafael García-Pérez, Juan-Manuel Santos-Delgado and Olga Buzón-García raise a question from the ‘dark side of the moon’ in online education: “Is virtual empathy a key competence to take into account in online learning processes?” That is to say, what are emotional skills and what role do they play in an educational interaction framed within a person-machine-person relationship?

In ‘The influence of the internet for pedagogical innovation: using twitter to promote online collaborative learning’, Maite Fernández-Ferrer and Elena Cano ask “How can formative evaluation be used to improve education?” The results of their research reveal positive effects on involvement, motivation and learning perception, but not on performance improvement. They suggest that future research should address the effects of self-regulating feedback.

In summary, this special issue helps us to understand teaching and learning on the Internet and as importantly helps us learn to devise more effective means to research the unprecedented educational opportunity afforded by these emerging technologies.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

Begoña Gros

Universitat de València, Valencia, Spain

Cristóbal Suárez-Guerrero

Athabasca University, Athabasca, Canada

Terry Anderson

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Begoña Gros .

Rights and permissions

Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article.

Gros, B., Suárez-Guerrero, C. & Anderson, T. The Internet and Online Pedagogy Editorial. Int J Educ Technol High Educ 13 , 38 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41239-016-0037-7

Download citation

Received : 21 September 2016

Accepted : 21 September 2016

Published : 05 October 2016

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s41239-016-0037-7

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

25,000+ students realised their study abroad dream with us. Take the first step today

Here’s your new year gift, one app for all your, study abroad needs, start your journey, track your progress, grow with the community and so much more.

Verification Code

An OTP has been sent to your registered mobile no. Please verify

Thanks for your comment !

Our team will review it before it's shown to our readers.

Essay on Importance of Internet: Samples for Students

• Updated on  
• Nov 23, 2023

Internet is not just a need or luxury, it has become a household necessity. It was used as a source of entertainment but now it is impossible to work in offices or study without the Internet. When the global pandemic locked everyone in their house, it became an important medium to connect, study and work. Students were able to study without the risk of catching COVID-19 because of the Internet. The importance of the internet is also a common topic in various entrance exams such as SAT , TOEFL , and UPSC . In this blog, you will learn how to write an essay on the importance of the Internet.

This Blog Includes:

Tips to write the perfect essay on internet, sample 1 of essay on the importance of the internet (100 words), sample essay 2 – importance of the internet (150 words), sample essay 3 on use of internet for student (300 words).

Also Read: LNAT Sample Essays

Now the task of essay writing may not always be easy, hence candidates must always know a few tips to write the perfect essay. Mentioned below are a few tips for writing the correct essay:

• Prepare a basic outline to make sure there is continuity and relevance and no break in the structure of the essay
• Follow a given structure. Begin with an introduction then move on to the body which should be detailed and encapsulate the essence of the topic and finally the conclusion for readers to be able to comprehend the essay in a certain manner
• Students can also try to include solutions in their conclusion to make the essay insightful and lucrative to read.

Also Read: UPSC Essay Topics

The last few years have witnessed heavy reliance on the Internet. This has been because of multiple advantages that it has to offer – for instance, reducing work stress and changing the face of communication most importantly. If we take the current scenario, we cannot ignore how important the Internet is in our everyday lives. It is now indeed a challenging task to visualize a world without the internet. One may define the internet as a large library composed of stuff like – records, pictures, websites, and pieces of information. Another sector in which the internet has an undeniably important role to play is the field of communication. Without access to the internet, the ability to share thoughts and ideas across the globe would have also been just a dream. 

Also Read: IELTS Essay Topics

With the significant progress in technology, the importance of the internet has only multiplied with time. The dependence on the internet has been because of multiple advantages that it has to offer – for instance, reducing work stress and changing the face of communication most importantly. By employing the correct usage of the internet, we can find various information about the world. The internet hosts Wikipedia, which is considered to be one of the largest best-composed reference books kept up by a vast community of volunteer scholars and editors from all over the world. Through the internet, one may get answers to all their curiosity.

In the education sector too, it plays a major role, especially taking into consideration the pandemic. The Internet during the pandemic provided an easy alternative to replace the traditional education system and offers additional resources for studying, students can take their classes in the comforts of their homes. Through the internet, they can also browse for classes – lectures at no extra cost. The presence of the Internet is slowly replacing the use of traditional newspapers. It offers various recreational advantages as well. It can be correctly said that the internet plays a great role in the enhancement of quality of life.

Also Read: TOEFL Sample Essays

One may correctly define the 21st century as the age of science and technology. However, this has been possible not only by the efforts of the current generation but also by the previous generation. The result of one such advancement in the field of science and technology is the Internet. What is the Internet? So the internet can be called a connected group of networks that enable electronic communication. It is considered to be the world’s largest communication connecting millions of users.

The dependence on the internet has been because of multiple advantages that it has to offer – for instance, reducing work stress and changing the face of communication most importantly. Given the current scenario, the Internet has become a massive part of our daily lives, and it is now a challenging task to imagine the world without the Internet. The importance of the Internet in the field of communication definitely cannot be ignored.

Without access to the internet, the ability to share thoughts and ideas across the globe would have been just a dream. Today we can talk to people all over the globe only because of services like email, messenger, etc that are heavily reliant on the internet. Without the internet, it would be hard to imagine how large the world would be. The advent of the internet has made the task of building global friendships very easy.

The youth is mainly attracted by entertainment services. Streaming platforms like Amazon , Netflix, and YouTube have also gained immense popularity among internet users over the past few years. The presence of the Internet is slowly replacing the use of traditional newspapers among people too. 

In addition to these, it has various recreational advantages to offer as well. For instance, people can search for fun videos to watch and play games online with friends and other people all over the globe. Hence, we can say the internet holds immense importance in today’s era. Internet technology has indeed changed the dynamics of how we communicate, respond or entertain ourselves. Its importance in everyday life is never-ending. It can be correctly said that the internet plays a great role in the enhancement of quality of life. In the future too, we will see further changes in technology .

Also Read: SAT to Drop Optional Essays and Subject Tests from the Exam

Related Articles

The internet provides us with facts and data, as well as information and knowledge, to aid in our personal, social, and economic development. The internet has various applications; nevertheless, how we utilize it in our daily lives is determined by our particular needs and ambitions.

Here are five uses of the internet: email; sharing of files; watching movies and listening to songs; research purposes; and education.

The Internet has also altered our interactions with our families, friends, and life partners. Everyone is now connected to everyone else in a more simplified, accessible, and immediate manner; we can conduct part of our personal relationships using our laptops, smartphones, and tablets.

This was all about an essay on importance of Internet. The skill of writing an essay comes in handy when appearing for standardized language tests. Thinking of taking one soon? Leverage Live provides the best online test prep for the same. Register today to know more!

Nikita Puri

Nikita is a creative writer and editor, who is always ready to learn new skills. She has great knowledge about study abroad universities, researching and writing blogs about them. Being a perfectionist, she has a habit of keeping her tasks complete on time before the OCD hits her. When Nikita is not busy working, you can find her eating while binge-watching The office. Also, she breathes music. She has done her bachelor's from Delhi University and her master's from Jamia Millia Islamia.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Contact no. *

Thank you! Watch our space for more informative blogs!

Thank you very much ! This helped me to write about internet .

Leaving already?

8 Universities with higher ROI than IITs and IIMs

Grab this one-time opportunity to download this ebook

Connect With Us

25,000+ students realised their study abroad dream with us. take the first step today..

Resend OTP in

Need help with?

Study abroad.

UK, Canada, US & More

IELTS, GRE, GMAT & More

Scholarship, Loans & Forex

Country Preference

New Zealand

Which English test are you planning to take?

Which academic test are you planning to take.

Not Sure yet

When are you planning to take the exam?

Already booked my exam slot

Within 2 Months

Want to learn about the test

Which Degree do you wish to pursue?

When do you want to start studying abroad.

September 2024

January 2025

What is your budget to study abroad?

How would you describe this article ?

Please rate this article

We would like to hear more.

Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World

Read our research on:

Full Topic List

Regions & Countries

• Publications
• Our Methods
• Short Reads
• Tools & Resources

Read Our Research On:

• Internet Seen as Positive Influence on Education but Negative on Morality in Emerging and Developing Nations

Internet Usage More Common Among the Young, Well-Educated and English Speakers

Table of contents.

• 1. Communications Technology in Emerging and Developing Nations
• 2. Online Activities in Emerging and Developing Nations
• 3. Influence of Internet in Emerging and Developing Nations
• Methods in Detail

As more people around the world gain access to all the tools of the digital age, the internet will play a greater role in everyday life. And so far, people in emerging and developing nations say that the increasing use of the internet has been a good influence in the realms of education, personal relationships and the economy. But despite all the benefits of these new technologies, on balance people are more likely to say that the internet is a negative rather than a positive influence on morality, and they are divided about its effect on politics.

Publics in emerging and developing nations are more convinced that the internet is having a negative effect on morality. A median of 42% say it is a bad influence on morality, while only 29% see the internet as a good influence. And in no country surveyed does a majority say that the internet’s influence on morality is a positive.

However, many in these emerging and developing nations are left out of the internet revolution entirely. A median of less than half across the 32 countries surveyed use the internet at least occasionally, through either smartphones or other devices, though usage rates vary considerably. Computer ownership also varies, from as little as 3% in Uganda to 78% in Russia.

But accessing the internet no longer requires a fixed line to a computer, and in many nations cell phones are nearly universal, while landlines are almost unheard of. In some countries, such as Chile and China, smartphone usage rates are comparable to that of the United States.

Internet access and smartphone ownership rates in these emerging and developing nations are greatest among the well-educated and the young, i.e. those 18- to 34-year-olds who came of age in an era of massive technological advancement. People who read or speak English are also more likely to access the internet, even when holding constant other key factors, such as age and education. 1 Overall, across the countries surveyed, internet access rates are higher in richer, more developed economies.

Once online, internet users in emerging and developing nations have embraced socializing as their most preferred type of digital activity. Majorities of internet users in all countries surveyed with large enough sample sizes to analyze say they stay in touch with friends and family online. Many also use cyberspace for getting information about politics, health care and government services. Less common are commercial and career activities, such as searching or applying for a job, making or receiving payments, buying products and taking online classes.

Social networkers in these countries share information on popular culture, such as music, movies and sports. To a lesser extent, they share views about commercial products, politics and religion. Regardless of what internet users choose to do online, most in these emerging and developing countries are doing it daily.

These are among the main findings of a Pew Research Center survey conducted among 36,619 people in 32 emerging and developing countries from March 17 to June 5, 2014. All interviews were conducted face-to-face. Comparison figures from the U.S. are from a Pew Research telephone survey conducted April 22 to May 11, 2014, among 1,002 people, unless otherwise noted.

Internet Influence Seen as Positive on Education, Negative on Morality

A clear majority of people in these emerging and developing countries see the internet as a positive influence on education. A median of 64% among the general population (including non-internet users) in the 32 emerging and developing nations surveyed say the internet is a good influence on education. People are also keen on the internet and its influence on personal relationships (53% good influence) and the economy (52%). Few people say that the internet has no influence on these aspects of life.

Publics are less enthused about the internet’s effect on politics. A median of just 36% say it is a positive for their country’s political system, while three-in-ten say it is a bad influence.

Generally, people who have access to the internet are more positive about its societal influence. For example, 65% of internet users in these emerging and developing nations say the increasing use of the internet is a positive for personal relationships, while only 44% of non-internet users agree. Similar gaps appear on the positive influence of the internet on education, the economy and politics.

Highly educated respondents are also more likely to say the internet is a positive influence. Six-in-ten of those with a secondary education or more say the increasing use of the internet is a good influence on personal relationships, compared with 44% among people with less education.

Internet Access Lacking in Many Countries, but More Common in Wealthier Nations

Even as general publics see the influence of the internet increase in their everyday lives, there are still many people without access to the internet in these emerging and developing countries. Across the 32 nations surveyed, a median of 44% use the internet at least occasionally, either through smartphones or other devices. Comparatively, as of early 2014, 87% of adults in the U.S. use the internet, according to Pew Research Center studies .

Access rates vary considerably across the emerging and developing nations surveyed. Two-thirds or more in Chile (76%), Russia (73%) and Venezuela (67%) have access to the internet, as do six-in-ten or more in Poland, China, Lebanon and Argentina. Yet less than half in Vietnam (43%) and the Philippines (42%) have internet access. And in nations that are less economically developed, such as those in sub-Saharan Africa, internet access rates lag even further.

Toward the bottom in terms of access rates are some of the world’s most heavily populated nations in South and Southeast Asia. These include Indonesia, where only 24% of the population has access to the internet, India (20%), Bangladesh (11%) and Pakistan (8%). Combined, these countries account for approximately a quarter of the world’s population.

[ps_interactive id=”32288″ showtitle=”h3″]

For example, 70% of young Vietnamese (18-34 years old) use the internet, while only 21% of those age 35 and older do. And three-quarters of Vietnamese with a secondary education or higher have access to the net, while only two-in-ten with less than a secondary education do. A similar gap appears for Vietnamese who can speak or read at least some English (83%) versus those who cannot (20%).

In addition to these factors, having a higher income, being male and being employed have a significant, positive impact on internet use, though to a lesser degree.

Socializing Most Popular Form of Internet Activity

Along with social networking, an equally popular use of the internet is staying in touch with friends and family. A median of 86% of internet users across the emerging and developing nations surveyed say they have used the internet this way in the past year.

While not as popular as socializing, many internet users also like to access digital information, whether it is political (a median of 54% among internet users), medical (46%) or governmental (42%). Getting online political news is particularly prevalent in Middle Eastern countries, like Tunisia (72%), Lebanon (70%) and Egypt (68%).

Utilizing the internet for career and commerce is a less popular activity. Among internet users, medians of less than four-in-ten say they look and apply for jobs (35%), make or receive payments (22%), buy products (16%) or take online classes (13%).

In certain countries, these professional and commercial online activities are more common. For example, 62% of internet users in Bangladesh and 55% in India say they have used the internet to look for or apply for a job. In China, home to internet commerce giants such as Baidu and Alibaba, 52% of internet users say they have purchased a product online in the last year.

Sharing information about personal views regarding religion and politics and purchases is less common. Less than four-in-ten social networkers in emerging and developing nations say they share views about products (37%), politics (34%) and religion (30%). But there is a range of interest in debating these topics online, from the 8% among social networkers in Russia and Ukraine who discuss religion to the 64% in Jordan who say the same. Similar ranges can be found for sharing views about politics and products on social networks.

Smartphones Have Not Yet Replaced Regular Mobile Phones

In several of the countries surveyed, sizeable percentages access the internet from devices other than a computer in their home. Across the 32 emerging and developing nations, a median of 38% have a working computer in their household. In 10 countries, computer ownership is roughly two-in-ten or less. By contrast, 80% in the U.S. and 78% in Russia have a computer in working order in their house.

But smartphones – and the mobile access to the internet that they make possible in some locations – are not nearly as common as conventional cell phones. A median of only 24% say they own a cell phone that can access the internet and applications (See Appendix B for a full list of devices in each country). In the U.S., 58% owned a smartphone as of early 2014.

These cell phones and smartphones are critical as communication tools in most of the emerging and developing nations, mainly because the infrastructure for landline communications is sparse, and in many instances almost nonexistent. In these emerging and developing nations, only a median of 19% have a working landline telephone in their home. In fact, in many African and Asian countries, landline penetration is in the low single digits. This compares with 60% landline ownership in the U.S.

Cell phones also have the added benefit of being capable of more than just vocal communication. Among cell phone owners across the 32 countries, 76% use text messaging via their phones. This is similar to the 83% of cell owners in the U.S. who text. And an additional 55% of mobile owners in these emerging and developing nations use their phones for taking pictures or video.

• For more on how these demographics influence internet use, see Appendix A. For a list of countries surveyed, including the smartphone devices and social networks specified in our questions in each country, see Appendix B. ↩

Sign up for our weekly newsletter

Fresh data delivery Saturday mornings

Sign up for The Briefing

Weekly updates on the world of news & information

• Emerging Technology
• International Technology
• Platforms & Services
• Social Media
• Technology Adoption

Many Americans think generative AI programs should credit the sources they rely on

Americans’ use of chatgpt is ticking up, but few trust its election information, q&a: how we used large language models to identify guests on popular podcasts, computer chips in human brains: how americans view the technology amid recent advances, striking findings from 2023, most popular, report materials.

• Spring 2014 Global Attitudes

1615 L St. NW, Suite 800 Washington, DC 20036 USA (+1) 202-419-4300 | Main (+1) 202-857-8562 | Fax (+1) 202-419-4372 |  Media Inquiries

Research Topics

• Age & Generations
• Coronavirus (COVID-19)
• Economy & Work
• Family & Relationships
• Gender & LGBTQ
• Immigration & Migration
• International Affairs
• Internet & Technology
• Methodological Research
• News Habits & Media
• Non-U.S. Governments
• Other Topics
• Politics & Policy
• Race & Ethnicity
• Email Newsletters

ABOUT PEW RESEARCH CENTER  Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of  The Pew Charitable Trusts .

Copyright 2024 Pew Research Center

Terms & Conditions

Privacy Policy

Cookie Settings

Reprints, Permissions & Use Policy

• Open access
• Published: 18 April 2015

The internet and education in the developing world - hopes and reality

• Srinivasan Ramani 1  

Smart Learning Environments volume  2 , Article number:  8 ( 2015 ) Cite this article

23k Accesses

17 Citations

Metrics details

Information and communication technologies have made a major impact on education. This raises hopes in countries like India which are undergoing rapid growth in their educational efforts. Will Information and Communication Technologies create a revolution in the education sector? What can we expect in the way of impact due to the spread of access to the Internet? Will Internet access over the mobile phone make rapid advances possible in rural areas? What evidence is available to judge popular claims and predictions regarding dramatic growth of Internet usage as a result of the widespread use of cell phones? Can we identify the impeding factors that limit progress in using technology for education at middle schools, secondary schools and higher secondary schools?

The paper addresses these questions, focusing mainly on Indian data and surveys progress in the spread of access to the Internet, including access using cell phones. It presents information on expenditure levels to offer insight into relevant socio-economic factors. It discusses the problem of language and the nature of content available over the World Wide Web. The whole effort reported in this paper is to get a realistic view of the current and potential impact of the Internet and Communication Technologies on education in India. Evangelists of technology have a way of creating unsustainable hopes by ignoring social and economic reality, and therefore a critical examination of available information is necessary.

The paper concludes by discussing technologies and initiatives worth considering for ameliorating the situation mentioned above.

Introduction

Every major development in technology triggers hopes in developing countries in regard to its potential impact on education. Internet technology has significantly contributed to furthering education in the world. The World Wide Web and search engines have made information on demand a reality. Low cost models for supporting learning, such as Massive Open Online Courses, are kindling new hopes in developing countries. Lower cost Internet access devices, such as tablets, phablets, and smart phones have addressed the problem of device affordability to a significant extent. The widespread use of cell phones opens up the possibility that many or most of them could be used as windows to the world of information and knowledge over the Internet.

Research questions

Is the stage set for a major revolution in the way technology can facilitate education in developing countries? What does published information from credible sources indicate about reality on the ground? Does rapidly evolving technology leave behind sections of the population, or is there uniformly good use of the new tools to promote learning? What should we expect from the future, and what should we do to overcome problems identified?

Background and literature review

The techno-centric view of development emphasises such phenomena as the rapid spread of technology, its adoption by the young and reducing costs. This view often leads to the creation of hope that such impact of technology by itself can revolutionize education. Warschauer et al. ( 2002 ) wrote a pioneering analysis of a case where such hopes had been created. In many cases such hopes turn out to be false, leading to missed opportunities for the citizens. His concludes his paper by emphasizing the importance of re-orienting “the focus from that of gaps to be overcome by provision of equipment to that of social development to be enhanced through the effective integration of Internet and Communication Technologies (ICT a ) into communities and institutions”. Keniston et al. ( 2003 ) discussed digital divides separating those who benefit from the Internet and those who do not. They discuss the divide between haves and have-nots in a socio-economic sense. They also discuss the divide resulting from people finding inadequate content in their own language on the Web. These two divides will be discussed in detail in the following pages, using recent Indian data. Keniston et al. ( 2003 ) page No. 2 have commented on “optimistic hopes and fantasies” that technological revolutions create. New phenomena such as the introduction of smart phones and tablet computers into developing countries have created such hopes and fantasies. The current paper will also discuss the impact of smart phones and tablet computers and analyse it from the point of view of the research questions defined earlier.

Growth of mobile phone subscriber base

Growth in the use of mobile phones in India has been quite rapid, and has been accompanied by the availability of relatively inexpensive smart phones. A document published by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI 2012 , page No. xi) states “From 2001 to 2011, the total number of telephone subscribers has grown at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 35 percent. The comparable rates in the 1980s and 1990s were 9 percent and 22 percent, respectively”. TRAI ( 2013 ) adds that the total number of telecom subscribers (Wireless + Wireline) as of 31 March 2013 was 898 b million. What is surprising is that out of this 898 million, wireless subscribers alone account for 868 million.

The figure of 868 million phones in use by a population of 1210 million (Census 2011 ) does not mean that 868 million Indians use mobile phones, as many users have more than one phone in service. TRAI ( 2013 ) gives overall teledensity c in India as 73 and rural teledensity in India as 41. The growth in teledensity has been truly impressive. (TRAI 2012 ) points out that overall teledensity had been only 4.3 in March 2002; rural teledensity had been at only 1.2.

Growth of the internet subscriber base

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, TRAI 2012 , states that Internet and broadband subscribers constitute only a small fraction of the population. However, the number of people capable of accessing the net through mobile phones is substantially higher if wireless data subscription through mobile is an indication. Out of the 91.8 million people using d Internet in India, there were only 18.7 million fixed Internet subscribers in 2010, as per (TRAI 2012 ).

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, TRAI ( 2013 ) gives figures as of March 31, 2013 as follows:

Total number of Internet subscribers: 165 Million.

Internet subscribers excluding those who access the Internet using wireless devices: 22 Million.

Internet subscribers who accessed the Network using wireless devices: 143 Million.

Meeker ( 2014 ) of Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers made a presentation in May 2012, offering the following observations, among others:

India has 121 million Internet users. The increase in their numbers during 2008–2011 had been 69 million. In comparison, the growth in the US had been 15 million.

There were 39 million 3G subscribers in India, growing at 841% year on year. Compare with 115% of China and the 31% of the US.

The percentage of Internet traffic carried by cell phones in India had overtaken Internet traffic carried by desktops by April 2012.

However, whether such growth has had any significant impact on education is highly arguable. A number of researchers had anticipated a significant role for smart phones in educational technology, for instance, Yerushalmy et al. ( 2004 ) and Thornton and Houser ( 2005 ). However, India has not seen any major use of smart phones in mainline school education. One reason for this might be the cost barrier that frightens the bulk of Indian students away from using cell phone access to the Web.

Kumar ( 2011 ) refers to the fact that one could pay a small amount to get pre-paid web access. Is this true? In reality, commercial costs for downloading information are frightening to students using prepaid mobile plan packages. A typical service provider charges them Indian Rupees (Rs) 0.03 per 10 KB of data transfer and this translates to a rate of Rs. 3000 (roughly US$ 50) for a gigabyte of data. Naïve users do not usually understand these calculations and a few make the mistake watching a few videos and see their meagre prepaid deposits disappear very quickly. The cost of downloading a 27 page article from the Wikipedia can be Rs 18 to the student at the rates mentioned above. In comparison, the researcher downloads the same article at less than one-tenth of that cost, because he has committed to a Rs. 250 per month data plan from his cellular service provider.

(TRAI 2012 ), quotes Bhide ( 2010 ) to say that the 3G spectrum auction combined with the bid values for broadband wireless access licenses yielded more than Rs. 100,000 crore in 2010 (roughly equivalent to US$ 21 Billion at that time) to the Government of India, amounting to approximately 1 percent of the Gross Domestic Product of the country. Mankotia et al. ( 2015 ) has reported that the spectrum auction for 2015 has earned the Government of India Rs. 109,800 crore (roughly equivalent to US $ 17.5 Billion). Cellular telephony companies that have paid such a large sum must obviously expect to earn commensurate incomes.

Krishnan and Ramani (2015) have discussed the growth of smart phone usage in India using slightly older data; they have also described the impact of ICT in India on engineering, technology and related science education at the university level.

Inexpensive internet access devices

A $100 mobile phone usable as a Web access device is obviously more attractive on economic grounds than a Laptop or Notebook costing $250 upwards. Tablets and Phablets offer other levels of trade-off. Noting the importance of low cost Web access devices, the Government of India has taken steps to make low cost tablets available to Indian students and teachers according to the Press Information ( 2012 ). However, a project to serve a large student population by making available to them a new device like this is fraught with its own complexity. The story of this project involves three versions of the device – Aakash 1, 2 and 3. The technology used in the device and comparison with competing devices requires a separate article to do justice to the topic. The Wikipedia article (Aakash 2014 ) is a useful summary.

Language of the users

Students can efficiently use the Internet to acquire knowledge and information only if content is available in a language in which they can read well. English continues to be the most widely used language world-wide for creating and for accessing content on the Web. (W3Tech 2014 ) indicates that 55% of the websites on the Internet show English as the language of their content. Indian languages, including Hindi and Tamil, are among the languages accounting for less than 0.1% of the websites each.

Times of India (Times 2010 ) quoted data from (Census 2001 ) and said that English was the primary language for barely 230,000 Indians at the time of the census, and that more than 86 million listed it as their second language and another 39 million as their third language. Census ( 2001 ) reported that 10.35% of the population speaks English as a secondary language. There were 88.5 million Secondary School students in India in 2001 (Census 2001 ), covering the age group from 14 to 18. Are high school students far more likely to be English speakers than their parents? This can be judged by information given by a Government Order from Andhra Pradesh State of India (Andhra Pradesh 2008 ), which states that 95% of private schools offer English as a medium of instruction, but that private schools are concentrated in the big cities. 98% of government funded schools in the state use only the language of Andhra Pradesh – Telegu – as the medium of instruction. Schools in which English is not the medium of instruction usually teach English as a second or third language. Students typically study this as one subject out of six. The author believes that the situation is similar in most of the other states of India.

The Indian Reader Survey (IRS 2012 ) of newspaper readers presents some relevant information, which is summarized below. Table  1 gives information regarding the number of Indian newspaper readers e as of the last quarter of 2012.

Out of 1222 million Indians, those that read a daily newspaper are approximately 153 million only; the top 10 dailies in a language cover a high percentage of readers in that language. Hence, only 19.7 million out of 1222 million Indians read English newspapers.

Results and discussion

Suitability of mobile devices in rural areas.

All mobile computing devices and Web access devices, including Laptops and Notebooks, offer certain advantages over PCs. Firstly, having a desktop is not an option for a student not having a desk, or even room for a table in the dwelling! Secondly, having a PC does not help when electricity is not available for hours at a time everyday due to “power-cuts”. (Chaurey et al. ( 2004 ), page 1697) refer to “continuous power cuts to the tune of 16–20 h for 20 days in a month is a common occurrence (as determined by the primary survey findings)”. In comparison to PCs, all mobile devices have their own stored power that lasts several hours and they do not require table space. Further, as mentioned in the Literature Review Section, the lower cost of mobile devices is a major attraction. Yet another important factor is that a mobile device does not require coping with complex wiring between several small units. Imagine a PC with an Uninterruptible Power Supply f , a Keyboard, a display, a modem and a mouse. It is a serious challenge to an inexperienced user to diagnose the cause of any problem arising in such a setup. In comparison, mobile devices technology packages the multiple devices mentioned above into one unit, eliminating problems posed by external wiring.

The smaller screen size and poorer text entry facilities make the phone option a poorer option for web access. Tablets are a potentially valuable tool for use in many developing countries. However, project planners face a variety of issues. Should they specify an ideal tablet for the task and expect manufacturers to build a new product to meet the specs; or should they distribute funds to stimulate purchase of a variety of devices? A design specified by the government is not attractive to major manufacturers who are reluctant to design a low cost product for fear that it will cannibalize their market for more expensive devices that are sold to those who can afford them, on the basis of fancier and fancier designs. The mainline tablet is designed for high quality reproduction of videos and photographs.

Every design effort requires a choice to be made between options. One would assume that the design of a low cost tablet for educational use in developing countries would avoid expensive features and focus on primary requirements. However, many designs for “low cost” access devices in developing countries have failed because they ended up trying to compete with multi-purpose tablets designed for well-off users.

No discussion of access devices in education can be complete without covering the case of the “One Laptop per Child (OLPC)”. A review from the educationists’ point of view can be found in (Warschauer and Ames, 2010 ). Their paper describes the faith that the supporters of the OLPC effort had in students’ ability to learn about using the Laptop on their own and in teaching one another. They point out on page 35 of their paper cited above that pilot programs, staged implementation, monitoring and formal evaluation were not considered relevant by the OLPC project leader, Nicholas Negroponte, because he had argued that the benefits of the device were obvious.

The conclusion of Warschauer and Ames ( 2010 ) is that “OLPC represents the latest in a long line of technologically utopian development schemes that have unsuccessfully attempted to solve complex social problems with overly simplistic solutions”.

It is necessary to note that no large scale use of tablets by school students has been observed in India as yet. Students in metropolitan cities, particularly those coming from an elite socio-economic background, may use tablets; but the devices are not used even by such students primarily for learning.

Teacher versus machines

Serious doubts have often been expressed in literature about the teacher playing an effective role in the education of students in developing countries. Sadanha ( 2012 ) page 5 refers to the “sea of unqualified teachers at the primary and secondary levels” in the context of teaching English at school level. She also refers to the extremely limited funds available for the purpose. (Negroponte ( 2006 ), page 26) has said, “ In some countries, which I’ll leave unnamed, as many as one-third of the teachers never show up at school. And some percent show up drunk.”

The level of education and training of teachers and their poor attendance at school are undoubtedly real problems in parts of rural India, but the students in such areas cannot do without teachers. Most of these students suffer some combination of several handicaps: poverty, urban/rural divide, caste, gender, language, religion, and parents who are functionally illiterate. Krishna ( 2013 ) describes the nature of handicaps that these factors create in educational opportunities in general. To argue that students so severely handicapped should teach themselves how to use a laptop or tablet for online learning is day dreaming. Warschauer ( 2002 ) has described the disappointing results of an experiment that tried to get students to teach themselves using computers, with no help from teachers or anyone else. To argue that one can overcome the problems arising from poor quality of teaching in rural areas by using technology alone is absurd; it is like arguing that malnutrition can be tackled merely by using vitamin and mineral supplements! Such supplements cannot substitute for real food!

If teachers do not have a good educational background and training and their attendance at school is not satisfactory, these problems have to be rectified with high priority. Information Technology is not a silver bullet to eradicate all problems of the educational system.

The language barrier

The literature review section presented data to show that 150 million Indians, that is approximately 12.5% of the population read dailies and that only 1.6% of Indians read their dailies in the English language. This is an indicator of what Indians would prefer to use as a language for acquiring information knowledge and skills over the Internet. Dailies offer information and knowledge. They are a major source of information and knowledge outside the classroom. Therefore, it is reasonable to expect readership statistics of newspapers to tell us about user preferences of language for information/knowledge access online.

Imagine a taxi driver who is asked to turn right at the next traffic signal; if he replies saying that it is a one-way street, he can be said to be a speaker of English. However, if he has a family member who has suffered a stroke, is he likely to read a library book, a web article or a magazine article in English to acquire information on the problem? Is he likely to benefit from such information in English? The contention of this paper is that the typical Indian would require such information in his mother-tongue, and that the availability of such information in Indian languages is very unsatisfactory. It is also worth questioning if teaching English as one of five or six subjects equips the typical Indian student to profit from information on the Web in the English language. A test of this ability could be to give printed information downloaded from the Web and test for its comprehension. Ideally, the topics should be chosen for relevance to the students being tested and the material should be selected for readability.

Computer related skills, aspirations and the language divide

Most parents who want their children to learn to use a computer effectively also want them to improve their competence in the English language. They expect their children to get better jobs as a result. They recognize that computer related skills are important to office work, whether in government offices, banks, or in companies. They understand that, as things stand in India at present, command over English is valuable to progress in life. However, enrolling one’s children in English-medium schools turns out to be counter-productive if the school is not effective in teaching English well enough. When children do not have anyone at home to help them learn English, studying in the English medium becomes a big burden to them. If standards of teaching are poor, they end up learning neither English nor any of the subjects they are taught through English!

Another source of disappointment is faced by students who study in a “vernacular medium” and hope to transfer easily to English medium classes in college. Sadanha ( 2012 ) presents the poignant real-life story of a Hindi-educated twenty-two-year-old, who joins an engineering college near Delhi. He is from a small town and has studied English as one of his subjects until the tenth grade, but his medium of instruction has been Hindi. He ends up committing suicide, leaving behind an explanatory note. The cause of his tragic end turns out to be undue pressure from his English-medium courses; he did not want to burden his parents with the costs of English coaching to help him prepare better. This disturbing story, covered in the Hindi and English print media, highlights the long-standing divide between students who come from English-medium backgrounds and those who come from “vernacular” ones. Puri ( 2008 ) has analysed this phenomenon in considerable depth.

Mukherji ( 2012 ) reported that over twenty million Indian students in grades I - VIII study in English medium schools. The number of such students has grown by 274% since 2003–04. It reported that private schools were not the only ones providing English medium education. Government schools in Jammu and Kashmir and in the Punjab were also adopting the English medium for use in government schools. However, it quotes Vinod Raina, an architect of India’s “Right to Education Bill”, saying “That government schools are turning to English medium does not in any way mean that either teachers or students at these schools can speak a word of English!”

Content in Indian languages

Consider a youngster hoping to get a job as an assistant in a photographic studio, and a student who has completed nursing school and is preparing for a job interview, who wants information on anaphylactic shock. Can they find the required information in their own languages? Some of this information, such as the one on anaphylactic shock, may be in printed form in text books. Some information, such as the one on digital cameras, could be in printed form in magazine articles or in expensive books in English. However, the focus of the following discussion would be on supplementary g information available online.

Google searches, carried out Aug 7, 2014 yielded the following results:

Query: Language: Hindi “anaphylactic shock”

Hits 1–8 offered dictionary meaning in Hindi. The ninth offered a translation into French, Stroke Anafilactico! The tenth offered an article in English on how to treat anaphylactic shock in a dog.

Query: Language: Hindi “digital camera”

Hits 1–4 offered dictionary meanings of “digital camera” in Hindi. The fifth was an English article on a GSM h phone, and the following six articles were irrelevant.

Query: Language: Hindi stroke

Hits numbered 1 and 3 were dictionary meanings in Hindi. The eleventh was an advertisement for a book on Stroke Paralysis. Hit No 2 (Stroke) was a well translated article in Hindi about stroke. It advised the reader that if he felt any signs of stroke, he should call 911! No wonder, it was an article published by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the US. Six other hits were irrelevant. One other hit was a downloadable version of the NIH document mentioned above.

Query: Language: Tamil “anaphylactic shock”

Query: Language: Tamil “digital camera”

The first hit was a 11 minute video from YouTube which seemed to be an advertisement for a spy cam in Tamil. The following 10 hits were English articles.

Query: Language: Tamil stroke

The first 11 hits comprised of two dictionary meanings, a YouTube video i in Tamil (Heart and Stroke 2007 ) lasting 36 seconds listing the warning signs of stroke, and nine English articles dealing with the different topics referred by the English word “Stroke”.

Using common tools for text entry, transliteration and translation

Part of the problem in creating information in Indian languages is that standard input techniques have not become very popular. Many Indian scripts use a two dimensional arrangement with complex diacritical marks, called “matras” attached above and below the line of basic characters. Several decades of work has gone into complex keyboards for handling these scripts (Sinha and Raman 1980 ), (Shanbhag et al. 2002 ); however, keyboards for Indian scripts are not in wide use except for government related work.

Innovative new tools such as Google input tools and Google translate make it easier for native speakers of Indian languages to produce reasonably good Web content in their own language, even if they have no experience in writing for publication. Such authors with professional knowledge in a variety of fields can quickly contribute to the creation of significant volumes of content, particularly if there is some help in the form of copy-editing. Some of the tools mentioned above involve the use of roman script keyboards and other such practices considered blasphemous in certain language communities concerned with the “independence” of their language. The objection to the use of other scripts is probably a natural extension of the prohibition on the use of words, speech sounds from other languages and the graphemes associated with them. These imports are considered threats to the “purity” of the language. However, it is the “openness” of a language as practiced by a community, rather than its purity, that decides how good that language is in absorbing new vocabulary and concepts. Learning science and technology becomes very difficult in a language that does not absorb new vocabulary and concepts easily.

The absence of a widely adopted text input mechanism affects not only the writers who can create content but also those who search and use information found on the Web. This loss cannot be substituted by poor translations en masse of Wikipedia articles from English. Such practices may increase the number of articles in a language, but cannot be expected to contribute to an increase in “good articles” (Good_articles 2014 ). Authoring Web content for the use of a specific language community, taking into account the local context is very important. Asking the residents of Tamil Nadu to dial 911 if they think they are having a stroke is not the only type of fault you encounter in articles written for someone else! A common problem with an article that has been “mechanically” translated from English to an Indian language is that it is usually at the wrong level for the readers. The translator should really modify the source article before translating it, so that it suits the needs of the target community well.

The problem of search

An experienced searcher is often able to ferret out more information from the Web than a naïve user. Some training in searching the Web is even more essential for the person looking for information in a language other than English, because so much less of web content is accessible to him; he needs a search procedure that has a high degree of “recall” so that he does not miss any of the significant content that is there. Using a search engine to search words or word patterns in an Indian language is surely not very easy for naïve users as of now. Specialized search engines could help. The effectiveness, ease of use and other qualities of available specialized search engines merits study.

The human machine interface

The fact that computers are programmable machines has brought the blessings/curse of great versatility. Hence, the modern laptop can be useful to authors, types-setters, photographers, video makers, game players, statisticians and so on and, by the way, to high school students! It is not surprising that a machine designed to perform so many different functions fails to meet two requirements of any student device – ease of use and simplicity of the interface. Any device like a tablet meant for use by school students cannot be based on a ‘design by a committee’. It has to have the stamp of an able designer. It should not be expected to meet a lot of needs, but be very good in meeting a few primary needs. eBook readers demonstrate the value of simplicity. Some of them use e-ink displays focusing on text reading than on video etc. They focus on book reading at the cost of interaction. They use slow-speed CPUs and demonstrate an ability to last a month or more on a single charge. They are light, rugged and are relatively low in cost. eBook readers cannot be the answer for a single device that meets a student’s needs, but they set a standard in simplicity of design and ease of use.

Ease of use of a device in the hands of students in a given setting is not something that can be predicted by a set of experts in advance. Nor can it be ensured by employing the very best of engineers to design the device. Ease of use has to be one of the major design goals and has to be achieved by having a right mix of engineers, designers and teachers in the team creating the device. Ease of use has to be tested for during the evolution of the design; user feedback should be used effectively by the designers to remove any identified flaws.

Ruggedness, repairability, and technical support

Warschauer and Ames ( 2010 ) are academics in the education field; but their paper gives surprisingly good attention to the issue of how frequently devices got out of service, what service was required to re-commission them, and what service was in fact available. Champions of proposed devices sometimes forget the life-cycle cost of an electronic device in a student’s hands. It is not the purchase price alone that matters, but the total life-cycle cost. Apart from cost is the sense of loss, sense of guilt and disappointment that a student experiences when a device is broken, lost or damaged.

The economic context of secondary education in India

Linden ( 2012 ), Page 135) indicates the scale of public expenditure in Indian Secondary j Education. The expenditure in government funded schools and government aided schools averages Rs. 10250 per year per student (2007–08 figure in terms of the value of the rupee in 2004–05), roughly equivalent to US $ 224. Again, as per Linden ( 2012 ), page 135), no fees were paid by 74% of students enrolled in Government funded schools, and by 54% of those enrolled in Government aided schools; while those enrolled in private schools paid an average of Rs. 3375 per year (roughly equivalent to US $ 74). It is worth comparing the cost of data plans from cellular service providers (Rs 250 per month) reported earlier with the total annual school fee reported here. This indicates how expensive Internet access is when it is provided over the cell phone network.

(Sankar ( 2011 ), Page 5) reports that 35% of secondary schools and 36% of the senior secondary schools were owned, financed and managed by purely private sector. The others were either government run or financially aided by government grants. (Sankar ( 2011 ), page 37) also notes that 81.4% of secondary school students attend schools funded or aided by government, as per 2007–2008 figures.

The percentage of students depending upon government funded or government-aided schools varies from 60% to almost 100% over the twenty nine states of India. (Sankar ( 2011 ), page 38) lists the percentages in each state.

Mobile internet revenue per customer

(TRAI 2011 ) provides authentic information about usage of Internet access over the cellular network. As per this document, average revenue per user (ARPU) per month by end of March 2011 was Rupees k (Rs.) 100 from GSM users and Rs. 66 from CDMA l users; both figures cover revenue from voice as well as other services for all users.

Revenues from Mobile Value Added Services (MVAS) were approximately Rs. 11/month; 60% of this, being about Rs. 7, was from SMS (Short Messaging Service, that is, text messaging). Internet related services earned only 9% of all MVAS revenues, and hence were approximately Rs. 1/month per subscriber.

Major uses of the SMS services were: Requests for ringtone downloads, seeking information like news, cricket scores, astrological predictions, subscribing to jokes and accessing other such services (TRAI 2011 ). This situation is not changing dramatically. A Report by the Press Trust of India, PTI ( 2012 ), quoted by the Economic Times gave information about the situation as of end-March 2012. It quotes a study done by the IAMAI m -IMRB n . Table  2 presents relevant information.

Of the Rs. 24 per month spent Mobile Value Added Services (MVAS), 27% went into ringtones, 17% into SMS based applications; mobile apps took 10% while games took 8%. So, mobile apps usage was less than Rs. 2.5 per month. The report predicted that ARPU will increase by 5–8% over the coming years.

So, here is the reality: The average Indian user did not spend the equivalent of even one-tenth of a U.S. $ per month on mobile apps by the year 2012! Commercial costs are too frightening to such users, and so most of them completely avoid Web access over the mobile phone, which is in principle so readily available.

The economic context presented above gives an indication of what needs to be addressed in regard to technology support for education at the secondary school level.

Challenges to be faced

Affordable access.

What is the best way for a school to make computers and Internet access available to its students? Installing PCs owned and managed by the school? Or, making WiFi available on the premises and using a variety of means to make tablets or smart phones available to students? There may not be a unique solution to all Indian schools, but it is worth discussing available options for extending Internet access to rural schools. Pun (2002) describes an interesting experience in Nepal in using WiFi as a backbone of a rural network as well as the distribution mechanism. Raman and Chebrolu ( 2007 ) and Surana ( 2009 ) have described other experiences in using wireless techniques for developing countries. Further, the National Optical Fibre Network of India (NOFN), when it becomes fully operational would make fibre optic access to Internet in 250,000 gram panchayats o ; Ilavarasan et al. ( 2014 ) offer a detailed description of this network along with a discussion of delays in its implementation. Schools and public libraries wishing to offer WiFi facilities at their premises should be able to use this network. Several countries have Universal Service Obligation Funds to provide support to efforts to take communication to rural areas. The (Department of Telecommunications 2004 ) describes the Universal Service Obligation Fund of India which disbursed Rs. 31 Billion in 2010–11 (roughly equivalent to 687 million US Dollars). Such funds, in principle, can pay for school use of WiFi in rural areas; in fact NOFN is funded by the Universal Service Obligation Fund of India.

Providing WiFi access through public libraries might be a very practical approach to serving users in rural areas including school students. They serve readers in different age groups and with varying backgrounds. Unlike many schools, they do not ban the use of cell phones and tablets. Schools often ban cell phones and tablets, considering them to be a distraction in the school environment; Goswami and Premkumar ( 2014 ) have studied this ban in the Indian context. Public Libraries can go beyond providing WiFi access; they can serve as centres for spreading skills and knowledge in regard to using the Internet for locating information. Free usage of Internet facilities can be limited to specific domains such as .edu, .ac.in, and .gov.in, to avoid undesirable uses. Given free access to the Web, rural Internet can play a major role in driving a knowledge revolution.

Human resources and managerial abilities are at least as important as equipment and software in the context of extending Internet facilities to schools. The researcher has found from visits to schools that they find it relatively easy for them to get one-time grants to buy a set of PCs and a server or two. However, the annual expenditure for maintenance and software upgrades is usually unavailable. Expertise is usually unavailable to block access to undesirable websites by students and staff. Anti-virus protection is often missing. As a result, schools prefer to keep PCs locked up.

Currently, schools hire temporary staff on an ad hoc basis to provide technical support. Usually, these recruits are without formal training but are keen to learn on the job. By the time they learn enough to do a decent technical support job, they move off to nearby big cities to better paid jobs in the IT industry. It is, therefore, essential to train regular staff members and give them technical skills necessary to keep equipment running; it is also necessary to ensure that such trained staff will be stable in school employment.

A related problem is teacher training. What should they teach and how? Where can they learn it themselves in the first place? A major initiative by Intel ( 2007 ) has trained over a million school teachers in the use of computers in India. However, we cannot expect one such program alone to offer all computer-related training required by the staff and teachers of all schools.

Content creation in students’ mother tongue

The discussion on the difficulty of finding adequate content in students’ mother tongue raises the question of what should be done to improve the situation. Encouraging and supporting those who are willing to create eBooks in appropriate languages would obviously be valuable. Public funding of such eBooks as well as financial rewarding of their creation can result in making these books available free of charge on the Web, positively impacting a huge number of students and other readers.

The encyclopaedia format is valuable for making information available on demand, in small units. A Wikipedia in the student’s own language, written with the local context in mind, and written at the right level of complexity would be a valuable tool for informal sharing of knowledge. Equally important might be the stimulation of the use of indigenous languages for informal communication and social networking. It would be ideal if society accepts the use of the Roman script as an optional script for communication over the Internet. This researcher believes that the use of the Roman script would have a positive effect on students using their own language over the Internet.

Conclusions

It is common to see defence ministers and army chiefs declare that the man behind the machine is the major determinant of victory in combat. It is important to recognize, similarly in education that teachers, librarians and technical support staff are critical to success in integrating technology into education. Ambitious plans to use technology in education should use a competence building approach rather than the “cargo cult” approach described by Gilbert et al. ( 2013 ).

The commercial world is primarily focused on selling international standard equipment at international prices as the bulk of easy profits lies in such sales. In many countries, depending on only commercial initiatives could leave up to 80% of learners without the benefits of computers and the World Wide Web. This has been borne out in the Indian context by earlier discussions in this paper on the use of English and other languages over the Web. Focus on rugged, low cost equipment designed for sustainable use in the local environment is very important to serve rural learners. Creating content in their languages, integrating the use of computers and access to the Web into the curriculum are equally important. Major projects in these areas can succeed only when a large number of teachers are trained and motivated to use the new technology.

Cost of access makes it very difficult to depend only on cellular technology to take the Internet to learners all over the country. Public funding of access to the Internet over WiFi from public libraries and schools is worth serious consideration.

The researcher hopes that this paper would contribute to readers gaining a balanced perspective on the potential of the Internet in education in developing regions of the world.

a The List of Abbreviations near the end of the paper provides definitions.

b Figures quoted in this paper are rounded off if the significance of the number is not altered by the approximation.

c Telephone density or teledensity is the number of telephone connections for every hundred individuals living within an area.

d Users are defined by (TRAI 2012 ) as subscribers who pay directly, as well as those who do not pay directly but have access as a member of the household, or from work or school.

e Readership covers the number of persons reading a copy of the daily irrespective of whether they bought it, and is to be distinguished from the count of subscribers.

f This usually gives only 20 minutes of backup power and cannot last the usual length of power cuts in a country like India. Its primary use is to protect the PC from damage arising from frequent power cuts.

g This term is used here to denote information other than what is in text books.

h Global System for Mobile Communications.

i This video also asks listeners to call 911 in case they experience signs of stroke!

j Indian nomenclature identifies grades IX and X as the ones offering secondary education and grades XI and XII as the ones offering higher secondary education.

k The Indian Rupee in 2011 was roughly equivalent to US $ 0.0217.

l Code division multiple access (CDMA), a channel access method used in some mobile phones.

m Internet & Mobile Association of India.

n Indian Market Research Bureau.

o The gram panchayat is the local self-government organization in a village or small town.

Abbreviations

Internet & Mobile Association of India

Information and Communication Technologies

Indian Market Research Bureau

A smartphone having a screen which is intermediate in size between that of a typical smartphone and a tablet computer

Telephone density or teledensity is the number of telephone connections for every hundred individuals living within an area

One laptop per child

Aakash (Tablet), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aakash_%28tablet%29 . Accessed 27 Aug 2014

Andhra Pradesh Government, Hyderabad, India, Education (SE-TRG) Department introduction of English medium with CBSE syllabus in a parallel section from VI class in 6500 identified high schools, Govt. Order No. 76, 10 Jun 2008, http://www.aponline.gov.in/Quick%20Links/Departments/School%20Education/Govt-Gos-Acts/2008/GO.Ms.76.2008.pdf . Accessed 19 April 2015.

S Bhide, “The 3G Auction: what will we do with the extra money?”. Macrotrack, National Council of Applied Economic Research 12 , 5 (2010)

Google Scholar  

Census 2001, Data on Language, http://www.censusindia.gov.in/Census_Data_2001/Census_Data_Online/Language/data_on_language.aspx Accessed 19 April 2015.

Census 2011, Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner of India, Provisional Population Totals: India, http://censusindia.gov.in/2011-prov-results/indiaatglance.html . Accessed 19 April 2015.

A Chaurey, M Ranganathan, P Mohanty, “Electricity access for geographically disadvantaged rural communities - technology and policy insights”. Energy Policy 32 , 15 (2004)

Article   Google Scholar  

Department of Telecommunications, Government of India, “Universal Service Obligation Fund of India” (2004), http://www.usof.gov.in/usof-cms/home.jsp . Accessed 19 April 2015.

L Gilbert, G Wills, O Sitthisak. “Perpetuating the cargo cult: Never mind the pedagogy, feel the technology”, International Computer Assisted Assessment (CAA) Conference, Jul 2013, (Southampton, UK), http://caaconference.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/Gilbert_caa2013_submission.pdf . Accessed 19 April 2015.

Good_articles, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Good_articles : Good_articles. Accessed 27 Aug 2014

I Goswami, R Premkumar, “The ban on mobile phones in the schools in India: a probe to augment efficacy in policy execution”. Int J Phys Soc Sci 4 , 1 (2014)

Heart and stroke foundation’s tamil video on the warning signs of stroke, uploaded in 2007, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXSoqZSB788 . Accessed 19 April 2015.

P V Ilavarasan, and N Srinivasan, “National Optical Fibre Network of India”, LIRNEasia (2014), http://broadbandasia.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/NOFN-India_11-April.pdf . Accessed 23 March 2015.

Intel, Teach Program, case study (2007), http://download.intel.com/education/sections/section2/pdf/casestudy_india_teach-f-scrn.pdf?iid=teach+india . Accessed 20 April 2015.

IRS Q4, Indian Readership Survey, HANSA Research, Published on website of the Media Research Users Council (MRUC) (2012), http://mruc.net/sites/default/files/IRS%202012%20Q4%20Topline%20Findings.pdf . Accessed 19 April 2015.

K Keniston, D Kumar, “The four digital divides” Online erişim21 (2003): 2010, http://web.mit.edu/~kken/Public/PDF/Intro_Sage_1_.pdf . Accessed 19 April 2015.

A Krishna, “Making it in India: examining social mobility in three walks of life”. Econ Pol Wkly 48 , 49 (2013)

M S Krishnan, S Ramani, in Chapter 10: Snapshots Of The Internet Around 2000, An Asia internet history - second decade (1991–2000), Kilnam Chon (Chief Ed.) (SNU Press, 2015), https://sites.google.com/site/internethistoryasia/book2 . Accessed 19 April 2015.

M Kumar, Impact of the Evolution of smart phones in education technology and its application in technical and professional studies: Indian perspective, international journal of managing information technology (IJMIT) Vol.3, No.3, Aug 2011, doi:10.5121/ijmit.2011.3304 39, http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1109/1109.0937.pdf . Accessed 19 April 2015.

T Linden, Secondary Education, Chapter 12, IDFC Report Secondary Education India 2012

A S Mankotia, “Spectrum auction: Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India, Idea Cellular commit about Rs 85,000 crore to government”, Economic Times, 27 Mar 2015, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/telecom/spectrum-auction-bharti-airtel-vodafone-india-idea-cellular-commit-about-rs-85000-crore-to-government/articleshow/46709981.cms . Accessed 19 April 2015.

M Meeker, KPCB, Internet Trends, D10 Conference, 5/30/2012, http://www.scribd.com/doc/95259089/KPCB-Internet-Trends-2012 . Accessed 19 April 2015.

A Mukherji, Times of India Report, 2 crore Indian children study in English-medium, Mar 2, (2012), http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/2-crore-Indian-children-study-in-English-medium-schools/articleshow/12105621.cms . Accessed 20 April 2015.

N Negroponte, “No lap un-topped: digital inclusion from the bottom up”, Public Sector Technology & Management, December 2006, pp 25–29 (2006), http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/apcity/unpan046328.pdf . Accessed 20 April 2015.

Press Information Bureau, Government of India, “President Unveils Aakash Version 2.0 Tablet on National Education Day”, November 11, 2012, http://pib.nic.in/newsite/erelease.aspx?relid=88984 . Accessed 20 April 2015.

M Pun, Nepal Wireless Networking Project, http://nepalwireless.net/ . Accessed 20 April 2015.

A Puri, “English Speaking Curse”, English is a source of anxiety, even despair, for its have-nots, Outlook Magazine, March 24, 2008, http://www.outlookindia.com/article/English-Speaking-Curse/237015 . Accessed 20 April 2015.

B Raman, K Chebrolu, “Experiences in using WiFi for rural internet in India”. Communications Magazine, IEEE 45 , 1 (2007)

PTI Report, 4 Jul, 2012, Article in the Economic Times, “Mobile VAS market may grow to Rs. 33,280 crore by 2013: study”, 4 July 2012, http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-07-04/news/32537173_1_mobile-vas-market-mvas-arpu . Accessed 20 April 2015.

R Sadanha, “English heart, Hindi heartland: The political life of literature in India” (University of California Press, 2012), http://www.academia.edu/962297/English_Heart_Hindi_Heartland_The_Political_Life_of_Literature_in_India . Accessed 20 April 2015.

D Sankar, 2011, Participation in India: An Analysis of the NSS 64th Round Data, Report No. 33, Discussion Paper Series, South Asia Development Unit, World Bank, http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2011/02/16/000333038_20110216230633/Original/593690Revised010in0India1NSS1Jan28.docx . Accessed 20 April 2015.

S Shanbhag, D Rao, R K Joshi, “An intelligent multi-layered input scheme for phonetic scripts”, Proceedings of the 2nd international symposium on Smart graphics (ACM, 2002).

RMK Sinha, A Raman, “A modular data terminal for Indian languages”. ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics 14 , 1–2 (1980)

S Surana, Designing sustainable rural wireless networks for developing regions, PhD dissertation (University of California, Berkeley, 2009)

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), Telecom Sector in India: A Decadal Profile (2012), http://www.trai.gov.in/WriteReadData/Publication/Document/201304121052403536675NCAER--Report08june12.pdf . Accessed 20 April 2015.

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), The Indian Telecom Services Performance Indicators January – March, 2013, http://www.trai.gov.in/WriteReadData/WhatsNew/Documents/Indicator%20Reports%20–01082013.pdf . Accessed 20 April 2015.

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI): Mobile Value Added Services (MVAS), Consultation Paper No 5/2011, 21st July, 2011 http://trai.gov.in/WriteReadData/WhatsNew/Documents/Indicator%20Reports%20-01082013.pdf . Accessed 20 April 2015

P Thornton, C Houser, "Using mobile phones in English education in Japan". J. Comput. Assist. Learn. 21 (3), 217–228 (2005)

Times of India, Indiaspeak: English is our 2nd language, Mar 14, 2010, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Indiaspeak-English-is-our-2nd-anguage/articleshow/5680962.cms . Accessed 20 April 2015.

W3Techs, Service provided by Q-Success, A-2344 Maria Enzersdorf, Austria, http://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/content_language/all . Accessed 20 April 2015.

M Warschauer, M Ames, Can one laptop per child save the world’s poor? J. Int. Aff. 64 , 1 (2010)

M Warschauer, Reconceptualising the digital divide, First Monday, [S.l.], Jul. 2002, ISSN 13960466, http://journals.uic.edu/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/967/888 . Accessed 20 April 2015.

M Yerushalmy, O Ben-Zaken, “Mobile phones in Education: the case of mathematics”. (The Institute for Alternatives in Education, University of Haifa, 2004)

Download references

Acknowledgements

The author thanks anonymous reviewers whose comments were valuable in making this paper more readable, consistent and compliant to the Journal’s standards.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore, 560100, India

Srinivasan Ramani

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Srinivasan Ramani .

Additional information

Competing interests.

The author declares that he has no competing interests.

Rights and permissions

Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 ), which permits use, duplication, adaptation, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article.

Ramani, S. The internet and education in the developing world - hopes and reality. Smart Learn. Environ. 2 , 8 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40561-015-0015-x

Download citation

Received : 30 September 2014

Accepted : 01 April 2015

Published : 18 April 2015

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s40561-015-0015-x

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Mobile phones
• Word Wide Web
• Access devices
• Socio-economic factors
• Human machine interface
• Smart Phones

• +91-8859500084
• [email protected]

Role of Internet in Education

The Internet , the most useful technology of modern times helps us not only in our daily lives but also in professional lives. For educational purposes, it is widely used to gather information and to do research or add to the knowledge of various subjects. 

The Internet plays a very vital role in education .  There is no doubt that in this modern era, everyone prefers Google for their queries, problems, or doubts. Popular search engines like Google, Yahoo, etc.

Are the topmost choice of people as they offer an easy and instant reach to a vast amount of information in just a few seconds. It contains a wealth of knowledge that can be searched at any time. The internet has introduced improvements in technology, communication, and online entertainment.

Today, it has become more important as well as a powerful tool in the world which is preferred by everyone. Everybody needs the internet for some or other purposes.

Students need the internet to search for information related to exams, curriculum, results, etc. You can also follow these steps for students to achieve success in student life .

The importance of the internet in education to the students means that it makes it easier for them to research things, and relearn the content taught in the school. People use it according to their needs and interests.

There are many benefits of the Internet in the field of education . Some of these are:

1. Cost-Effective and Affordable Education

One of the largest barriers to education is high cost . The Internet improves the quality of education , which is one of the pillars of the sustainable development of a nation. It provides education through Videos (like YouTube tutorial videos) and web tutorials which are affordable to everyone and cost-effective.

2. Student-teacher and Peer Interaction

The internet has allowed students to be in constant touch with their teachers or with other classmates with the help of social media, messaging apps, and chat forums.

Parents can interact as well as communicate with teachers and school authorities about their kid’s performance in the school. Interaction with like-minded people on forums can help students to explore new ideas and enrich their knowledge.

3. Effective Teaching and Learning Tools

The Internet has become a major tool for effective teaching as well as a learning tool. Teachers can use it as a teaching tool by posting their teaching materials (notes and videos) on the school website or forum.

The learning process becomes interesting and diverse with the use of tutorial videos and notes. Teachers can teach with the use of animation, PowerPoint slides, and images to capture the students’ attention.

4. Easy Access to Quality Education

Students can easily access quality education materials like tutorial videos on YouTube for free or pay fees online f or more quality study materials.

Teachers can also make use of the internet by providing the students with extra study material and resources such as interactive lessons, educational quiz as well, and tutorials. Teachers can record their lectures and provide them to the students for revisions which is better than reading from notes.

5. Interaction with Digital Media

Regular use of digital media is one of the most basic parts of our lives. Digital bulletin boards save paper and allow the displaying of videos and audio to attract the attention of students. Nowadays, there are many paid sites that provide education resources that are rich in quality and easily understandable to the masses.

6. Keeping you updated with Latest Information

Information is the biggest advantage that the Internet is offering. There is a huge amount of information available for every subject. It keeps us up to date with the latest information regarding the subjects in which we are interested.

7. Learning with Multimedia

It helps the students with the learning process as it helps to simplify the knowledge. Also, it helps to visualize what is being taught by the teachers in school. If you want to prepare for final exams , you can access Video Tutorials and other resources online through the Internet.

The Internet is a boon to the people, which is used all over the world. Hence, it should be used for good purposes. It has had a great impact on imparting education to the children. If this is used in appropriate ways that meet children’s development level, they can benefit and learn from the Internet.

About the author

Related posts.

Boarding School Vs. Military School

What Is Remote Learning

Importance of Knowledge In Learning

Quick enquiry.

Select Class 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th 9th 10th 11th 12th

Get In Touch With Us!

Essay on Internet Uses For Students

500 + words internet essay.

The internet is described as a global network of computer systems interconnected and following the internet security protocol. However, have you ever considered why the internet is important? This 500+ Words Essay on internet advantages and disadvantages will help students ace essay writing during exams.

A combination of high-end science and advanced technology, the internet is a viral invention. Here, in an essay on the internet, students can learn about the uses and impact of the internet.

Why the Internet Is Important

The internet has undergone significant development from the time of its birth to the present. Over a period of time, the internet has become more interactive and user-friendly. It has also helped man in day-to-day transactions and interactions. The Internet is widely used for numerous functions such as learning, teaching, research, writing, sharing content or data, e-mails, job hunting, playing games, listening to music, watching videos, exploring and finally surfing the internet. Meanwhile, though it makes life easy for people, the internet also comes with a lot of pros and cons. Find the advantages and disadvantages of the internet from this essay.

Also read: History of Internet

Essay on Advantages of Internet

Read this essay on internet advantages to know the effects of using the internet. Look for the points mentioned below.

• The internet has helped reduce the usage of paper and paperwork to a large extent by computerising offices, schools, NGOs, industries and much more.
• Internet helps to provide updated information and news from all over the world
• Education, business and travel have been thriving with the growth of the Internet
• The internet is of high educational and entertainment value
• The internet makes access to public resources, libraries and textbooks much easier
• The internet makes it easy by reducing the time and energy taken to do work
• Work has become more efficient, quick and accurate
• Meetings and conferences are made easier with video calls and other brilliant tools

Apart from all these, as mentioned in the above paragraph on Internet uses, it helps carry out banking activities, exchange information, shop for various goods and more.

Essay on Internet Disadvantages

Despite the use of the internet and its positives, there are also some internet disadvantages. Continuous use of the internet can affect our lifestyle and health. Let us check out the disadvantages of the internet from this paragraph.

• Over-dependence on the internet can lead to many health problems
• People tend to spend more of their productive time doing nothing but browsing
• Even if the internet is now used extensively at work, overuse of the internet could lead to depression
• Quality time with friends and relatives is primarily reduced due to the use of the internet
• Cybercrime has also increased as internet security and privacy are compromised

Thus, we have seen the uses of the internet and its impact on students and working professionals. While we know that overuse of the internet should be avoided, we also have to acknowledge that the internet has still not been exploited to its full potential, despite its massive growth. In conclusion, we can state that to make internet use more comfortable and pleasurable, school students should be taught about the pros and cons of using the internet, thus ensuring that they can stand up against cybercrime and ensure safety.

Also Read: Social Media Essay | Essay on Women Empowerment | Essay On Constitution of India

Frequently asked Questions on Internet Essay

What is the internet.

The internet is a global system of interconnected computers and this system uses a standardised Internet Protocol suite for communication and sharing information.

What are the top 5 uses of the Internet?

The Internet is mostly used by people to send emails and to search on any topic. It can be used to download large files. People depend on the internet for electronic news and magazines these days. A lot of people, especially the young generation use it to play interactive games and for entertainment.

What is WiFi?

WiFi is the latest wireless technology used to connect computers, tablets, smartphones and other electronic devices to the internet.

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

Your Mobile number and Email id will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Request OTP on Voice Call

Post My Comment

• Share Share

Register with BYJU'S & Download Free PDFs

Register with byju's & watch live videos.

Counselling

use of internet in education. do you agree or disagree?

Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Writing9 with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

• Check your IELTS essay »
• Find essays with the same topic
• View collections of IELTS Writing Samples
• Show IELTS Writing Task 2 Topics

In many countries today, parents are able to choose to send their children to single-sex schools or co-educational schools. Some people think that children going to single-sex schools have disadvantages later in life. To what extent do you agree?

Employers somtimes ask people applying for jobs for personal information. such as their habbies and interests, and whether thay are married or single. some people say that this information may be relevant and useful. others disagree. discuss both these views and give your own opinion., the number of cars has increased significantly in major cities. what problems does this cause and what are some solutions to these problems, some people think that punishment is the best way of teaching children to behave well. others believe that it is better to reward children for good behaviour. discuss both views and give your own opinion., a magazine wants to include contributions from its readers for an article called” the book that influenced me the most” write a letter to the editor of the magazine about the book that influenced you most, in your letter describe what this book was about explain how this book influenced you say whether this book would be likely to influence other people.

Sample details

• Views: 1,037

Related Topics

• Standardized Testing
• Study skills
• Free education
• Interpersonal Communication
• Mass production
• Physical Education
• Programming
• Importance Of College Edu...
• Moon Landing
• Digital Technology
• Mobile technology

The Use of Internet in Education

Introduction The Internet is a huge collection of computer networks that can communicate with each other – a network of networks. It is built upon thousands of smaller regional networks spread out around the world. It has emerged as a powerful tool for education. It is a confluence of all kinds of information related to each and every field of education. It also allows teacher and students, sitting in far flung areas to interact, share and exchange information.

This paper seeks to study about the history, advantages & disadvantages, and the prospects of using the internet in the field of education. For this study we rely on the information from the books and websites we have gathered from the school library and other libraries. In particular, the paper aims to answer the following questions: 1. How did the use of internet in education develop? 2. What are the advantages & disadvantages of using internet in education? 3. What would be the future or prospects of using the internet in education?

ready to help you now

Without paying upfront

History of Using Internet in Education 1960’s The roots of online education can be traced back to the 1960s. Technicians and scientists at the University of Illinois created PLATO in that said year. PLATO stands for Programmed Logic for Automated Teaching Operation. It was the first computer-based learning system that allowed students at terminals to access lessons, exams and other schooling information from remotely located professors. Later, in 1969, the Advance Research Projects Agency Network or ARPANET was created by the United States Department of Defense.

According to Kolbe(2008), ARPNET would eventually evolve into the Internet. 1980’s The 1970s were quiet and fairly uneventful in regards to the evolution of online education, but in 1988, the Internet Relay Chat was invented. It allowed people to have real-time conversations either one-on-one or in a chat room setting. In 1989, Tim Berners conceived and invented the World Wide Web; popularly known as the Internet, this series of connected servers store documents that would later become known as WebPages.

Later that year, the University of Phoenix – which was established in 1976 by Dr. John Sperling, and already focusing on distance learning for working adults – opened its e-doors, becoming the first university to offer online degrees. (Lee, 2006). 1990’s As the Internet gained in popularity throughout the 90s, same goes with online education. The National Center for Supercomputing Applications released the web browser known as Mosaic in 1993. According to Matt (2008), Mosaic offered a user-friendly interface that made it the first browser to receive wide praise.

Online education was gaining viability at this point. 2000’s With the advances in audio and video broadcasting technology, online education reached new levels in the 2000s. According to OnlineColleges. net, 3. 94 million students took at least one online course in the 2007 fall semester. That is 20 percent of all higher education students in the United States. Now, OnlineColleges. net states that roughly half of the 4,500 physical colleges in the U. S. offer online education to some degree. The Advantages of Using Internet in Education

Cite this page

https://graduateway.com/the-use-of-internet-in-education/

You can get a custom paper by one of our expert writers

• Critical Thinking
• College Education
• Active listening
• English Language
• Vocational education
• Engineering
• Educational inequality
• World Wide Web

Check more samples on your topics

The role of internet in education.

During a visit to India in March President Clinton watched a woman enter a village health centre, call up a web page on the computer, and get information on how to care for her baby. It is possible that this baby will have better health because of the availability of information on the internet. However,

Internet Is Helpful to Education More Than Harmful

Online Education Vs Traditional Education

The Internet has penetrated every field of society and it has become an indispensable channel. It has dramatically changed everyone’s life，especially the ways how we receive educations. With the internet, students are able to take advantages of the huge amount of educational resources online to get educated whenever they want to and wherever they are.

What is the structure of education from early years to post-compulsory education

Summarise entitlement and provision for early years education. Explain the characteristics of the different types of schools in relation to educational stage(s) and school governance. Explain the post-16 options for young people and adults. The ‘early years’ is a government definition for the education of children from birth up to the age of five, which includes

US education VS Finnish education

The Education Dilemma & a Finnish Solution Twenty years ago America lead the world in education. Although, US universities still rank among the best in the world Americas grade schools no longer do so well. American students currently rank 31st in math, 17th in Science and 14th In reading (PISA) These rankings are acquired through

Higher Education and Co-education Coeducation

Higher Education

CO-EDUCATION Coeducation means the education of boys and girls in the same schools, colleges or universities. This is a modern concept and it has made a remarkable rapid progress. It was first introduced in Switzerland. Now it has become popular almost in the whole of Europe and the whole of America. The Eastern companies are

The Australian Education System and the Chinese Education System

The education systems of China and Australia have many differences and similarities. There are some similarities in their timetables and calendars. However, they are some differences between Chinese and Australian education systems, such as extra-curricular activities, ways of transportation students take to get to school and types of schools. This essay will describe the differences

Tele-Education – Technologies in Distance Education

Tele-education has a long history beginning with systems like that for teaching children in Australian Outback, the British Open University and other such organizations. These built on the idea of correspondence courses where course materials are sent periodically by post and augmented the experience with broadcasts either on radio or on TV. The problem of

Online Education and Face to Face Education

Online Education

Online education is the latest and most common form of distant education in the today world because technology plays an inevitable role in our life whereas face to face education means students physically present in the classroom. Some studies show that online students slightly outperforming their traditional classroom counterparts, most indicate that there is little

Traditional Education vs Modern Education

The traditional didactics (in charge of the methods) using as analytical, synthetic, inductive and deductive 'didactic methods' which are the general logical methods, that is, the methods of all thinking, not teaching in particular. Because man thought like 'logos', like intelligence, reason, thought. The logical methods are those that we use in any daily, permanent activity, in

Hi, my name is Amy 👋

In case you can't find a relevant example, our professional writers are ready to help you write a unique paper. Just talk to our smart assistant Amy and she'll connect you with the best match.

• School Guide
• English Grammar Free Course
• English Grammar Tutorial
• Parts of Speech
• Figure of Speech
• Tenses Chart
• Essay Writing
• Email Writing
• NCERT English Solutions
• English Difference Between
• SSC CGL English Syllabus
• SBI PO English Syllabus
• SBI Clerk English Syllabus
• IBPS PO English Syllabus
• IBPS CLERK English Syllabus

800 Words Essay On Internet in English for Students

• 500+ Words Essay on Newspaper in English For Students
• 500+Words Essay on My Hobby in English
• My Aim in Life Essay For Students: 100, 200 & 500 Words Essay
• 500+ Words Essay on Importance of Education in English
• Essay on My Father in English: 300, 500 & 800 Words Essay
• Essay Writing on Cell Phones For Students
• Essay on Science in English: Check 200, 300 & 500 Words Essay
• Essay on My Family: Short, 10 Lines, 100 Words Essay
• 200+ Action Words in English: Know How to Use
• Essay on my Best Friend: 10 Lines, 100 Words, 200 Words Essay
• Essay on My House in English: Check 300, 500 & 800 Words Essay
• Importance of Sports for Students in English
• Essay on Summer Vacation For Students in English: Samples Class 3 to 5
• 70+ New Words in English With Their Meaning
• Essay on My Favourite Book For Students
• Essay on My Favourite Teacher (10 Lines, 100 Words, 200 Words)
• Essay on My Mother: 10 lines, 100 Words and 200 words essay
• A Guide to Writing an Essay for Job Interviews
• Important Questions On Computer Internet For Bank Exam

The internet has transformed the world in ways that were unimaginable just a few decades ago. It has revolutionized how we communicate, access information, conduct business, and even how we entertain ourselves. The internet has become an integral part of our daily lives, and it’s hard to imagine a world without it.

At its core, the Internet is a vast network of interconnected computers and servers that allows for the exchange of information and data across the globe. It was originally conceived as a way for researchers and scientists to share information and collaborate on projects, but it has since evolved into a ubiquitous platform that has permeated every aspect of modern life.

One of the most significant impacts of the internet has been on communication. Before the internet, communication was limited by geography and time zones. People had to rely on physical mail, telephone calls, or face-to-face meetings to communicate with one another. The internet has made communication instantaneous and borderless. With the rise of email, instant messaging, video conferencing, and social media platforms, people can communicate with each other from anywhere in the world, at any time.

The internet has also revolutionized the way we access information. In the past, people had to rely on physical libraries, books, and other printed materials to access information. Today, with the internet, a wealth of information is available at our fingertips. From online encyclopedias to news websites, academic journals, and online databases, the internet has made it possible to access information on virtually any topic imaginable.

Another significant impact of the internet has been on the economy and the way we conduct business. The rise of e-commerce has made it possible for businesses to reach a global market and sell their products and services online. Online shopping has become increasingly popular, and many traditional brick-and-mortar stores have had to adapt to this new reality by establishing an online presence.

Furthermore, the internet has enabled the rise of the gig economy, where people can work as freelancers or contractors for multiple clients and projects simultaneously. This has created new opportunities for individuals to earn a living and has allowed businesses to access a global talent pool.

The internet has also had a profound impact on education. Online learning platforms and distance education programs have made it possible for students to access educational resources and attend classes from anywhere in the world. This has opened up new opportunities for people who may not have had access to traditional educational institutions due to geographical or financial constraints.

However, the internet has also brought with it a number of challenges and concerns. One of the biggest concerns is privacy and security. With so much personal information being shared online, there is a risk of data breaches and cyber attacks. Companies and individuals need to be vigilant about protecting their personal information and implementing strong cybersecurity measures.

Another concern is the spread of misinformation and fake news. The internet has made it easier for anyone to publish and share information, regardless of its accuracy or credibility. This has led to the proliferation of fake news and conspiracy theories, which can have serious consequences for individuals and society as a whole.

There is also concern about the impact of the internet on mental health and well-being. The constant exposure to social media and the pressure to curate a perfect online persona can lead to feelings of anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem. Additionally, the addictive nature of the internet and the constant stream of information can contribute to decreased attention spans and difficulty focusing on tasks.

Despite these challenges, the internet has proven to be an invaluable tool that has transformed the way we live, work, and interact with the world around us. It has opened up new opportunities for communication, education, and economic growth, and has made it possible for people to connect and collaborate in ways that were previously unimaginable.

As we move forward, it is important to address the challenges and concerns surrounding the internet while also embracing its potential for innovation and progress. This may involve implementing stronger cybersecurity measures, promoting digital literacy and critical thinking skills, and encouraging responsible and ethical use of the internet.

In conclusion, the internet has had a profound impact on virtually every aspect of modern life. It has revolutionized communication, education, business, and access to information. While it has brought with it a number of challenges and concerns, the internet has proven to be an invaluable tool that has transformed the way we live and interact with the world around us. As we continue to navigate the digital age, it is important to embrace the opportunities that the internet provides while also addressing its challenges and promoting responsible and ethical use.

Uses of Internet

In the 21st century, the internet has become an indispensable part of our daily lives, revolutionizing the way we connect, learn, work, and entertain ourselves. Its multifaceted uses have permeated every aspect of society, bringing about unprecedented convenience and opportunities.

Communication stands out as one of the internet’s most significant uses. Instant messaging, video calls, and social media platforms have transcended geographical barriers, allowing people to stay connected with friends and family across the globe. The internet has turned the world into a global village, fostering a sense of unity and understanding among diverse cultures.

Education has undergone a remarkable transformation due to the internet. Online courses, tutorials, and educational resources have made learning accessible to anyone with an internet connection. Students can pursue degrees, acquire new skills, and access a wealth of information at their fingertips, democratizing education and breaking down traditional barriers to learning.

The internet has also redefined the way we work. Remote collaboration tools, cloud computing, and virtual offices have become essential components of the modern workplace. This shift has not only increased efficiency but has also opened up new opportunities for freelancers and remote workers, contributing to the rise of the gig economy.

In the realm of information, the internet has become an unparalleled resource. Search engines allow us to access vast amounts of information on any topic imaginable. This democratization of information has empowered individuals, encouraging critical thinking and facilitating informed decision-making.

Entertainment has undergone a digital revolution, with streaming services, online gaming, and social media platforms providing endless avenues for amusement. The internet has not only transformed how we consume content but has also given rise to new forms of artistic expression and creativity.

In conclusion, the internet’s uses are multifaceted and far-reaching, impacting every facet of our lives. From connecting people across the globe to revolutionizing education, work, and entertainment, the internet continues to be a transformative force, shaping the present and influencing the future. As we navigate the digital landscape, it is essential to harness the potential of the internet responsibly, ensuring that it remains a force for positive change in the years to come.

Convenience Due to Internet

The advent of the internet has ushered in an era of unprecedented convenience, transforming the way we live, work, and interact with the world. In our fast-paced lives, the internet has become a cornerstone of efficiency and ease, offering a multitude of conveniences that have reshaped our daily routines.

Communication is perhaps the most obvious and impactful convenience brought about by the internet. Instant messaging, email, and social media platforms have revolutionized the way we connect with others. Whether it’s staying in touch with loved ones, collaborating with colleagues, or reaching out to friends across the globe, the internet has made communication instantaneous and seamless.

The convenience of online shopping has fundamentally altered the retail landscape. With just a few clicks, consumers can browse, compare prices, and purchase a vast array of products from the comfort of their homes. The rise of e-commerce platforms has not only made shopping more convenient but has also introduced the concept of doorstep delivery, saving time and eliminating the need for physical store visits.

Information retrieval has been transformed by the internet’s vast repository of knowledge. Search engines provide instant access to information on any conceivable topic, enabling users to quickly find answers, conduct research, and stay informed. This ease of information retrieval has empowered individuals, making knowledge more accessible than ever before.

The workplace has undergone a paradigm shift with the internet, enabling remote work and flexible schedules. Online collaboration tools, cloud computing, and virtual communication platforms have made it possible for individuals to work from virtually anywhere, reducing the constraints of traditional office settings and commuting.

Entertainment has also become infinitely more convenient through streaming services, online gaming, and digital media platforms. The ability to access a diverse range of content on-demand has given consumers unprecedented control over their entertainment choices, eliminating the need to adhere to fixed schedules or physical media.

In conclusion, the internet has woven a tapestry of convenience into the fabric of our lives. From streamlined communication and effortless online shopping to boundless information access and flexible work arrangements, the conveniences offered by the internet have become integral to our modern existence. As we navigate this digital landscape, the ongoing evolution of internet technologies continues to enhance and redefine the meaning of convenience in our interconnected world.

Also Read: Rabindranath Tagore Essay in English For Students 500+ Words Essay on Mother Teresa in English For Students Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru Essay in English For Students APJ Abdul Kalam Essay For Students: Check 500 Words Essay

Essay On Internet- FAQs

What is internet short essay.

In the modern time, internet has become is one of the most powerful and interesting tools all across the world. The Internet is a network of networks and collection of many services and resources which benefits us in various ways. Using internet we can access World Wide Web from any place.

What is Internet in 150 words?

The internet is the most recent man-made creation that connects the world. The world has narrowed down after the invention of the internet. It has demolished all boundaries, which were the barriers between people and has made everything accessible. The internet is helpful to us in different ways.

What is internet 100 words?

A. The internet, a recent man-made marvel, has brought the world closer. It has shattered all barriers and made everything accessible. The internet serves us in countless ways, from sharing information with people across the world to staying connected with our loved ones.

Please Login to comment...

Similar reads.

• English Blogs
• School English

Improve your Coding Skills with Practice

What kind of Experience do you want to share?

Advertisement

Analysis and Health

Does using the internet make us happier or sadder.

A study of more than 2 million people in 168 countries suggests that having access to the internet is linked to higher life satisfaction, but many questions remain unanswered

By Clare Wilson

13 May 2024

We still don’t know the potential well-being effects of social media specifically or how they could vary among people of different ages

Galina Zhigalova/Getty Images

Growing access to the internet is linked with better well-being around the world, a large study has concluded. The finding seems to be at odds with concerns that smartphones have led to a tsunami of mental health problems. So, where does the truth lie?

While concerns over excessive use of phones, computers and other devices may seem like a modern phenomenon, in fact they echo similar fears over past…

Sign up to our weekly newsletter

Receive a weekly dose of discovery in your inbox! We'll also keep you up to date with New Scientist events and special offers.

To continue reading, subscribe today with our introductory offers

No commitment, cancel anytime*

Offer ends 2nd of July 2024.

*Cancel anytime within 14 days of payment to receive a refund on unserved issues.

Inclusive of applicable taxes (VAT)

Existing subscribers

More from New Scientist

Explore the latest news, articles and features

Social media brings benefits as well as risks to young people

Subscriber-only

Stop calling it social media - these firms don't care what we want

Should social media come with a health warning, lack of sleep is more of a problem for teen girls than social media, popular articles.

Trending New Scientist articles