Internet Should Be Helping But Instead Hurting Education

Kids will always look for shortcuts and think they are the smartest person in the room, they always have and always will even though the latter is never true and never will be.

But with the proliferation of the internet and micro gadgetry available to kids brought into the learning environment they are finding shortcuts to accomplish studies and cheating the system but are ending up looking stupid as many go to Wikipedia to plagiarize their homework and reports while sitting right in the classrooms.

Too bad they're finding out the hard way that the website, while a great idea in theory is basically a landfill of misinformation and unverified garbage that kids think is no different than perusing and actually reading The Encyclopedia Britannica's and or heading to a local library or two, as we had to do to research for required studies not so long ago.

One would've thought that this plethora of endless information of the accurate and verifiable variety on the internet would be every half serious student's dream is instead eschewed for more often than not useless information coming from sites like Wikipedia.

Falling exam passes blamed on Wikipedia 'littered with inaccuracies' -

Scotsman.com News: "WIKIPEDIA and other online research sources were yesterday blamed for Scotland's falling exam pass rates.
The Scottish Parent Teacher Council (SPTC) said pupils are turning to websites and internet resources that contain inaccurate or deliberately misleading information before passing it off as their own work.

The group singled out online encyclopedia Wikipedia, which allows entries to be logged or updated by anyone and is not verified by researchers, as the main source of information.

Standard Grade pass rates were down for the first time in four years last year and the SPTC is now calling for pupils to be given lessons on using the internet appropriately for additional research purposes 'before the problem gets out of hand'."Eleanor Coner, the SPTC's information officer, said: "Children are very IT-savvy, but they are rubbish at researching. The sad fact is most children these days use libraries for computers, not the books. We accept that as a sign of the times, but schools must teach pupils not to believe everything they read.

"It's dangerous when the internet is littered with opinion and inaccurate information which could be taken as fact.

"Internet plagiarism is a problem. Pupils think 'I'll nick that and nobody will notice', but the Scottish Qualifications Authority has robust ways of checking for plagiarism and parents are worried their children will fail their exams."

Ronnie Smith, the general secretary of the Educational Institute of Scotland, said there was a higher risk of inaccurate information on the internet than in books. He added: "We need to make sure youngsters don't take what they read online as fact."

Several further education institutions have already banned students from using the interactive encyclopaedia. At one college in Vermont in the US, a history professor found several students repeated the same error in exam papers. On discovering the information came from Wikipedia, the college outlawed its future use.

Ms Coner said overuse of the internet also meant students did not develop interpretative skills. continued

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