Role of Internet in Education

Internet, the most useful technology of modern times which 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.

Internet plays a very vital role in education. It is no doubt that in this

modern era everyone prefers Google for their queries, problems or
doubts. Popular search engines like Yahoo, Google, etc. are the
topmost choice of people as these offer an easy and instant reach to
the 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 internet for
some or other purposes. Students need 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.

Importance of internet in education to the students’ means that it

makes them easier 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 sustainable development. It provides education through
Videos (like youtube tutorial videos) and web tutorials which is
affordable to everyone and cost-effective.

2. Student – Teacher and Peer Interaction

One can be in constant touch with their teachers or with other fellow
classmates with the help of internet. Parents can interact as well as
communicate with teachers and school authorities about their kid’s
performance in the school. Interaction with the like minded people on
forums can help students to explore new ideas and enrich their
knowledge.

3. Effective Teaching and Learning Tool

The Internet has become a major tool for effective teaching as well as a
learning tool. Teachers can use it as a teaching tool in order to gain
students’ achievement. The learning process becomes interesting and
diverse with its use. Teachers can teach with the use of animation,
powerpoint slides, and images to capture the students’ attention.
4. Easy access to Quality Education
Teachers can make use of the internet by proving the students with
extra study material and resources such as interactive lessons,
educational quiz as well as tutorials. Teachers can record their lectures
and provide it 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, allow displaying of videos and audios
to attract the attention of students. Nowadays, there are many paid
sites which provide education resources which are rich in quality and
easily understandable to masses.

6. Keeping you updated with Latest Information

Information is the biggest advantage which 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.

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 purpose. 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.

Internet and its uses

Internet is a global network of inter-connected computers, where one

computer can be connected to any other computer (or computerized device)
in any portion of the world.

Internet uses various internet protocol technologies. The recent introduction

of mobile internet have been equally successful.

Internet surfing is very easy. Internet is available in all major villages, towns,
cities of almost every country. It is possible to surf through Internet with the
help of internet browsers such as Windows explorer, Google chrome, etc.

The organization that provides the Internet service to end-users are known as
an Internet Services Providers (ISP). The major internet companies of India are
BSNL, Vodafone, Airtel, Idea, and Aircel.

Uses of Internet

The key to success of Internet is the information. The better the quality, the
more usage of Internet operations.

1. Large volume of Information: Internet can be used to collect

information from around the world. This information could relate to
 education, medicine, literature, software, computers, business,
entertainment, friendship, tourism, and leisure. People can search for
information by visiting the home page of various search engines such as
Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.
2. News and Journals: All the newspapers, magazines and journals of the
world are available on the Internet. With the introduction of broadband
and advanced mobile telecommunication technologies such as 3G (third
generation) and 4G (fourth generation), the speed of internet service has
increased tremendously. A person can get the latest news about the
world in a matter of few seconds.
3. Electronic Mode of Communication: Internet has given the most
exciting mode of communication to all. We can send an E-mail (the
short form of Electronic Mailing System) to all the corners of the world.
4. Chatting: There are many chatting software that can be used to send
and receive real-time messages over the internet. We can chat with our
friend and relatives using any one of the chatting software.
5. Social Networking: People can connect with old friends on social
networking sites. They can even chat with them when they are online.
Social networking sites also allow us to share pictures with others. We
can share pictures with our loved ones, while we are on a vacation.
People are even concluding business deals over these social networking
sites such as Facebook.
6. Online Banking (Net-Banking): The use of internet can also be seen in
the field of banking transactions. Many banks such as HSBC, SBI, Axis
Bank, Hdfc Bank, etc. offers online banking facilities to its customers.
They can transfer funds from one account to another using the net-
banking facility.
7. E-commerce: Internet is also used for carrying out business operations
and that set of operations is known as Electronic Commerce (E-
commerce). Flipkart is the largest e-commerce company in India. The
rival, Amazon, is giving stiff competition to Flipkart.
 8. Mobile commerce: Mobile commerce (also M-Commerce) refers to the
commercial transaction that takes place over the mobile internet. Using
the mobile internet technology, many companies have introduced
mobile version of websites and mobile apps, to promote and sell their
products. Customers can simply browse several through the products
and buy online through mobile internet.

9. Mobile wallet: Many companies offer the service of mobile wallet to its
customers. Users must have a smart-phone and internet connection to
use this service. Users can pay an amount into their mobile wallet, which
they can use to make online payment such as bill payments, recharges,
etc.

10. Entertainment: Apart from a major source of knowledge and

information, the utility of Internet in the field of entertainment cannot
be undermined. We can visit various video sites and watch movies and
serials at our convenient time.

11. Technology of the Future: Internet is the technology of future. In the

times to come, offices would be managed at distant places through
Internet.

Conclusion

Internet is very useful for everyone. It is the superhighway of information. The

cost of Internet has been reduced over-time. The cost of the computer system,
modem and other associated hardware is also likely to come down. In case
computer system is not available, one can browse internet over the mobile
phones. All major smart-phones support browsing functionality.
The possibilities an Internet are endless. However, some people waste their
time while surfing through various websites. Some others try to view those
websites that are not meant for them. This is a bad tendency and must be
checked. Internet must be used for development and not for decay.

People must learn Internet operations and must try to collect only the useful
information. The present century would usher humanity into a new era of
Information Technology (IT) and Internet is the backbone of this exciting era.

What is a Search Engine?

The purpose of a search engine is to extract requested information
from the huge database of resources available on the internet. Search
engines become an important day to day tool for finding the required
information without knowing where exactly it is stored. Internet usage
has been tremendously increased in recent days with the easy to use
search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo! There are different types
of search engines to get the information you are looking for. In this
article, we will explain different types of search engines and purpose of
them.
Why Search Engines are Important?
Search engines are part of daily life for two types of people.
Users who search and get information
Site owners who try to optimize their websites for getting top rank in
the search results.
User do more than billions of searches only on Google to find relevant
information. This opens out a huge scope for businesses and online
content publishers to attract people to their website for free. Search
engines follow guidelines and have their own algorithm to decide the
ranking of websites in search results. Optimizing websites for Google
and other search engines is an essential part of any website owner for
reaching out the large audience. The visitors can generate revenue for
site owners either through advertisements displayed on the site or
though purchasing products.
Different Types of Search Engines
Search engines are classified into the following three categories based
on how it works.
1. Crawler based search engines
2. Human powered directories
3. Hybrid search engines
4. Other special search engines
1. Crawler Based Search Engines
All crawler based search engines use a crawler or bot or spider for
crawling and indexing new content to the search database. There are
four basic steps, every crawler based search engines follow before
displaying any sites in the search results.
Crawling
Indexing
Calculating Relevancy
Retrieving the Result
Most of the popular search engines are crawler based search engines
and use the above technology to display search results. Example of
crawler based search engines:
Google
Bing
Yahoo!
Baidu
Yandex
2. Human Powered Directories
Human powered directories also referred as open directory system
depends on human based activities for listings. Below is how the
indexing in human powered directories work:
Site owner submits a short description of the site to the directory along
with category it is to be listed.
Submitted site is then manually reviewed and added in the appropriate
category or rejected for listing.
Keywords entered in a search box will be matched with the description
of the sites. This means the changes made to the content of a web
pages are not taken into consideration as it is only the description that
matters.
A good site with good content is more likely to be reviewed for free
compared to a site with poor content.
Yahoo! Directory and DMOZ were perfect examples of human
powered directories. Unfortunately, automated search engines
like Google, wiped out all those human powered directory style search
engines out of the web.
3. Hybrid Search Engines
Hybrid Search Engines use both crawler based and manual indexing for
listing the sites in search results. Most of the crawler based search
engines like Google basically uses crawlers as a primary mechanism and
human powered directories as secondary mechanism. For example,
Google may take the description of a webpage from human powered
directories and show in the search results. As human powered
directories are disappearing, hybrid types are becoming more and more
crawler based search engines.
But still there are manual filtering of search result happens to remove
the copied and spammy sites. When a site is being identified for
spammy activities, the website owner needs to take corrective action
and resubmit the site to search engines. The experts do manual review
of the submitted site before including it again in the search results. In
this manner though the crawlers control the processes, the control is
manual to monitor and show the search results naturally.
4. Other Types of Search Engines
Besides the above three major types, search engines can be classified
into many other categories depending upon the usage. Below are some
of the examples:
Search engines have different types of bots for exclusively displaying
images, videos, news, products and local listings. For example, Google
News page can be used to search only news from different newspapers.
Some of the search engines like Dogpile collects meta information of
the pages from other search engines and directories to display in the
search results. This type of search engines are called metasearch
engines.
Semantic search engines like Swoogle provide accurate search results
on specific area by understanding the contextual meaning of the search
queries.

Social networking
Social networking is a nice form of entertainment, is great for meeting
people with similar interests, and is definitely useful for staying in touch
with old friends/acquaintances.

It can also be a very effective promotional tool for businesses,

entrepreneurs, writers, actors, musicians, or artists.

Most of us have hobbies or things that we are keenly interested in, like
books, television, video games, or movies. Social networks allow us to
reach out to others that have the same interests.

The Pros and Cons of Social Networking

Social networking has changed the way we communicate, do business,

get our daily news fix and so much more. But is it really all it's cracked
up to be?

That depends on who you talk to and how you're using it. A site
like Facebook could serve as an opportunistic launching pad for a new
business owner, or it could be an inescapable source of negative peer
pressure for a young teen. There are pros and cons to everything in life
— and that includes our social networking habits.

The Pros of Social Networking

There are a lot of upsides to social networking. Ask yourself how you
can take more advantage of the following whenever you decide to
check out your favorite social networks.

CONNECT TO OTHER PEOPLE ALL OVER THE WORLD

One of the most obvious pros of using social networks is the ability to
instantly reach people from anywhere. Use Facebook to stay in touch
with your old high school friends who've relocated all over the country,
start a Google Duo chat with relatives who live halfway around the
world, or meet brand new people on Twitter from cities or regions
you've never even heard of before.

EASY AND INSTANT COMMUNICATION

Now that we're connected wherever we go, we don't have to rely on

our landlines, answering machines or snail mail to contact somebody.
We can simply open up our laptops or pick up our smartphones and
immediately start communicating with anyone on platforms like Twitter
or one of the many social messaging apps available.

REAL-TIME NEWS AND INFORMATION DISCOVERY

Gone are the days of waiting around for the six o'clock news to come
on TV or for the delivery boy to bring the newspaper in the morning. If
you want to know what's going on in the world, all you need to do is
jump on social media. An added bonus is that you can customize your
news and information discovery experiences by choosing to follow
exactly what you want.

GREAT OPPORTUNITIES FOR BUSINESS OWNERS

Business owners and other types of professional organizations can

connect with current customers, sell their products and expand their
reach using social media. There are actually lots of entrepreneurs and
businesses out there that thrive almost entirely on social networks and
wouldn't even be able to operate without it.

GENERAL FUN AND ENJOYMENT

You have to admit that social networking is just plain fun sometimes. A
lot of people turn to it when they catch a break at work or just want to
relax at home. Since people are naturally social creatures, it's often
quite satisfying to see comments and likes show up on our own posts,
and it's convenient to be able to see exactly what our friends are up to
without having to ask them directly.

The Cons of Social Networking

It's no secret that there's also a dark side to social networking. You may
want to ask yourself how you can minimize the following cons of social
networking as much and as often as possible.

INFORMATION OVERLOAD AND OVERWHELM

With so many people now on social media tweeting links and posting
selfies and sharing YouTube videos, it sure can get pretty noisy.
Becoming overwhelmed by too many Facebook friends to keep up with
or too many Instagram photos to browse through isn't all that
uncommon. Over time, we tend to rack up a lot of friends and
followers, and that can lead to lots of bloated news feeds with too
much content we're not all that interested in.

PRIVACY ISSUES

So much is shared online these days that issues over privacy is

becoming an increasingly big concern. Whether it's a question of social
sites owning your content after it's posted, becoming a target
after sharing your geographical location online, or even getting in
trouble at work after tweeting something inappropriate — sharing too
much with the public can open up all sorts of problems that sometimes
can't ever be undone.

SOCIAL PEER PRESSURE AND CYBER BULLYING

For people struggling to fit in with their peers — especially teens and
young adults — the pressure to do certain things or act a certain way
can be even worse on social media than it is at school or any other
offline setting. In some extreme cases, the overwhelming pressure to fit
in with everyone posting on social media or becoming the target of a
cyberbullying attack can lead to serious stress, anxiety and
even depression.

INCREASED FEELINGS OF SOCIAL ISOLATION

Since people are now connected all the time and you can pull up a
friend's social profile with a click of your mouse or a tap of your
smartphone, it's a lot easier to use online interaction as a substitute for
face-to-face interaction. Some people argue that social media actually
promotes antisocial human behavior.
DISTRACTION AND PROCRASTINATION

How often do you see someone look at their phone? People get
distracted by all the social apps and news and messages they receive,
leading to all sorts of problems like distracted driving or the lack of
gaining someone's full attention during a conversation. Browsing social
media can also feed procrastination habits and become something
people turn to in order to avoid certain tasks or responsibilities.

SEDENTARY LIFESTYLE HABITS AND SLEEP DISRUPTION

Lastly, since social networking is all done on some sort of computer or

mobile device, it can sometimes promote too much sitting down in one
spot for too long. Likewise, staring into the artificial light from a
computer or phone screen at night can negatively affect your ability to
get a proper night's sleep. (Here's how you can reduce that blue light,
by the way.)