Hit the Books...with the Internet

With our dependency on the internet in mind, it is difficult to imagine a world without it. Daily the internet is used for work, school, play, and more. For me, the internet has more advantages than disadvantages to my education.

The internet has benefited my educational career immensely because it is now part of my career. One of my majors is Computer Information Systems, a cousin of Computer Science. Many of our projects concern the internet in that we take into consideration the needs of some internet users and morph that into class projects. Through studying and completing projects, we are conditioning our minds to look at the internet a different way. We are challenged to look at the internet and examine how we can improve upon it. In addition to acting as a great research tool for us, it is also a great model for predicting what is next in the technical world because of its constantly evolving nature.

While the internet has obvious benefits for me as a Computer Information Systems student, it also provides great benefits for me as a Theatre student. My other major is Theatre Arts. Within our curriculum, I have gained motivation to create my own material. The internet provides a wider audience for my creative projects, much more than a theater can possibly offer. YouTube is a great outlet for the creative type. Within the past year I have gained an interest in the YouTube industry because of its unlimited possibilities and creative freedom. Now I take what I learn in my theatre classes and incorporate that into my YouTube channel where I write, act in, and edit all of my own videos.

Like previously stated the internet has impacted my education so much by expanding my mind and opportunities. However, the internet creates some drawbacks to education as a whole. First, the internet has decreased our work ethic. We are lazy. Students now have unlimited access to academic sources, which is great for research papers. However, we are too prone to copying and pasting what we see and crediting ourselves for these ideas. The internet, in a way, damages are creativity in terms of creating topics for papers. It is a great advantage for brainstorming but should not be used to find a concrete essay topic.

Another prominently negative impact the internet has on education is that it decreases productivity. It is a distraction in some cases. We desire for instant gratification, which is what the internet offers. Even worse, so much content exists on the internet that begs for the attention of students. One large example of this is social media. We are so dependent on our phones and on social media with a new status or tweet from a friend making its way to our phone almost constantly. It has even affected me. I clicked way from this essay to check my Instagram feed to find only one new picture was posted within the past five minutes. Today, the internet has many disadvantages to our education.

While the internet is a great tool for education, it has some drawbacks. However, I have learned how to use the internet to my benefit for education. I feel more prepared to take on the real world – even as the internet evolves faster than the real world itself.