Internet and Education - Internet as Teacher Essay -- Exploratory Ess

The Internet as Teacher    The Internet is here to stay. Whether one lives in a backwoods shack or Silicon Valley, the potential of online communication cannot be ignored. In facing the twenty-first century, a fearless inventory of the role that the World Wide Web will play in global culture must be taken. This "phantom resource," where web sites can shift and vanish like ghosts, should not lend itself to widespread application without careful examination of the specific functions it will be utilized to perform. The Internet is an entity without a master, and censure and discretion on the Web are left to the responsibility of the individual publisher. This means a student searching the vast fields of information that have flowered on-line may find pay dirt or fertilizer. Overzealous use of computers, even in innocence, to ease the burden of solid research in favor of convenience or for the sinister purpose of cutting costs, will reduce learning from a creative process to a point-and-click procedure , effectively diminishing students from social-learners to a cyber-tribe of hunters-and-gatherers relying on the ability of machines and the rote memorization of monitors' displays.    The blank countenance of the computer screen, the faceless teacher, is a frightening prospect of education's on-line future. Information is present as print, yet the medium of transference is missing. The student may be receptive and the information relevant; however, learning takes place not by passive observation but in a dynamic whirlwind of uncertainty and intent. A student enters the classroom to learn, and another human being must provide the nuance, the animation, and the conscious feedback--in short, the simple bi... ...runching ability of a calculator, it would be highly difficult to learn algebra directly from this device. In the same respect, the World Wide Web is not a means to an end. It is not the magnificent force that is the human intellect. The mind is humanity's greatest asset and its refinement is humanity's greatest achievement. The evolution of such a device should not be left to anything less than its equal. The intangibles involved in the shaping and growth of human consciousness--the excitement of sharing knowledge, the drive to communicate in the most effective way, the value of having a person take a personal stake in the education of an individual-- are without parallel. In the complex chemistry of education, the computer is just a tool. The true energy and force is in the experiment itself; the teacher is the catalyst; and the student is the reaction.