School and technology... - Vir Batra

When the parents of the 21st century were growing up, they had to go to the library for information that they needed, they had to search for the 1 book with the 1 piece of information that they needed. Now children have that information at their fingertips, and it’s all thanks to the internet.

The only problem now is figuring out what’s right and what's wrong. Is the access to technology helpful or an obstacle for the education for the students of today's time?

An anonymous form was sent to the students of 8-6 english class and the responses received were eye opening. 50% of students said that technology is better than just having  a textbook but the other 50% said the opposite. 56% people said that social media websites actually help the work that they do. The point is, students of the 21st century feel that the internet is really helpful for the work, but can also be very distracting.

A few days ago, one of the parents at UWC East, noticed that their child was watching a youtube video. The parent questioned his child about how he should’ve been working. Puzzled, the parent assumed the child was just getting distracted, but after the child answered his dad, the dad realised it was an educational video, teaching him a method on how to do a problem for homework.

Another parent was also confused about their child's work habits. He noticed that their child went to their room to do homework and came out in less time than it took england to lose the world cup. He noticed that the child had math homework, but didn’t even open his text book, just went on his computer and after about 1 hour he said that he had finished and he was prepared for the test he had the next day.

All though it may seem like it to parents that their children don’t actually do work on their laptop at home and just play games or watch videos online, when they have homework, it is actually quite productive and the internet does help the children.

The internet is a great resource, with diverse information that children growing up in previous era’s didn’t have access to. It can be confusing for few and natural to others and everyone needs to understand that it is bigger than Live aid in 1985.