Education is the cornerstone of our future. In this present digital age, technology has invented new ways which students can now access useful and vast resources through the four corners of a screen. With simply the push of a button or click of a mouse. In fact, the number of schools with access to the internet is one of the indicators being tracked under SDG4 (Quality Educaton for All). That shows how critical it is considered for education.
The Internet offers significant benefits to students in Nigerian setting such as:
Courtesy of techpoint.ng
- Easy access to reading materials: The world has a vast amount of knowledge today and the Internet has made it possible for such resources to be accessed. The network of computers and devices from all over the globe has created a platform where people can trade knowledge, the best selling currency, with little difficulty. Coursework on several subjects and topics from well-renowned schools such as Harvard, MIT, Yale etc… are there for one’s consumption on free websites such as http://www.edx.org, http://www.coursera.org, http://ocw.mit.edu, etc…Now doesn’t that sound yummy for us nerds.
Courtesy of flickriver.com - Portability – I candidly think there are very few people that would happily carry around those many books, putting a whole lot of pressure on their shoulders, necks and backs. Truth is heavy and large books, due to the weight and size, are very difficult for us to move around with. A lot of times, personally, I’ve forfeited an edifying read simply because I wanted to avoid the stress of holding massive pages of text. Fortunately, there are platforms which have been created to curb this problem. One of which, is the moodle, Moodle is a learning platform or a free open source software package designed to help educators create effective online courses based on sound pedagogical principles. Through this avenue, teachers, lecturers, facilitators and the like can upload course content and material, and all the students have to do is download. These large books, either textbooks or manuals have been reborn digitally. Don’t you think the studious young man in the above picture would have had a much wider smile on his face if he had just a phone or tablet which contained all those books and much more? I know I would.Thank you internet 🙂
- Sustainability- Now this is my favourite. Since the invention of paper in 100B.C in China, writings, scrolls,books have had a difficult time withstanding the test of time. You see original copies of books tend to die out. Pages tear up, covers peel off, harsh weather conditions like heavy rainfall or intense wind certainly do paper more harm, in fact only harm. Fast forward to the 1970s, and the electronic library (e-library) kick-started. Books now have the privilege of enjoying the sustyvibe (*wink wink*). Information and knowledge from the past and present now have a more reliable means of storage and retrieval.
“Only a fool learns from his own mistakes, a wise man learns from the mistake of others. Fools learn from experience. I prefer to learn from the experience of others”. – Otto Von Bismarck
In order to move into tomorrow, mistakes of yesterday should be learnt from today. Millions of pages holding wisdom and knowledge have simply been compressed to bytes of data that can be accessed through the Internet. What a beneficial alliance we have.