Neutral

By Dayaan, Imee Joy A.

“With great power comes great responsibility” – Spiderman
The internet does not teach wisdom. “As a toddler, I endured the crackling pings of
modem. As a child, I relied on giant drives with a few hundred bytes. Now, as a teen, I cram
a million times more data into a tiny USB so lightweight I barely feel it around my neck.
Computers-hardware, software, networks, processing, pixels – follow one trajectory: faster,
smarter, more convenient, more powerful”, wrote Scott Lee Chua in his award winning essay
entitled Of Pixels and Power on the 2011 Palanca Memorial Award.
Born in the Information age, debates linger as to how blameless or detrimental the
internet could be. The ICT, which stands for Information Communication Technology refers
to the technology that access information. True enough, it is a concept of storing, restoring,
operation, and receiving information in its prevalence in the digital era or in the virtual world.
However, such power, influence, and capacity poses a great threat as it levels with the
inventive, innovative, and rebellious cerebral capacity of humanity. Thus, institutions
continue to utilize it as a tool in any terms it might be of great help. One certain industry are
the educational institutions. Over the years, ICT has been married to education. Such
integration empowers, changes, and transforms the concept of the Philippine educational
system. The fuse between creates the opportunity to develop creativity, communication skills,
and smart solutions. But how reliable is the internet?
According to the Software and Information Industry Association of 2000, students
who use educational technology in colleges are more successful because they are more active
in learning and in increasing their self-esteem. However, this is incongruent to observations
which show that students engaged in the virtual world are likely to have lesser confidence in
actual lessons and discourse. Without guidance, students are led to the habit of “cutting and
pasting”, laziness, irresponsible behavior, worse, explicit versions: pornography. Overall,
the evidence on the impact on attainment of learning through ICT remains inconsistent.
White and black mixed together make gray, and much of ICT is in the gray zone. ICT
is merely a tool and only matters on how it is utilized. A great question revealing is that ICT
has been the center of discourse in the concept of teaching-learning process, but how far the
Philippines has gone to in the acquisition of needed technology in providing students in
educational institutions in the entire archipelago? And how accurate is the utilization of ICT
in the information processing? ICT often disdains discipline. And the internet does not teach
wisdom. Without discipline, technology destroys.
With Google Earth, everyone can visit the Grand Canyon. With Skype, distance
Greenland is a click closer to the Philippines. On YouTube, Matt Stefanina and his
choreography are available and free; all without leaving their chairs. An hour of online study
is good, but subscribing to Deep Web isn’t. International libraries are accessed, and the
originality of books are neglected. Creativity is fostered, but authenticity is deserted.
Deadlines are met, but credibility is abandoned. The internet is the greatest democracy ever
known from history, and in the prevalence of the unregulated freedom, at the end of the day,
it’d be either for nobility or annihilation.