Issues about Using an Internet Service in Education - Essay Example

The accelerated growth of the World Wide Web has turned the Internet into a huge and immense information storehouse. The web has become an incredibleresource for almost every kind of information need. For many people doing research or finding an answer to a question simply involves going to a web search engine. Search engines have become the fundamental part of information seeking on the Internet. Introduction of search engines in the learning process have been a milestone in the global history of education delivery. Nevertheless, lack of linguistic knowledge has been a concurrent challenge to effectively access this so called global storehouse of information. EFL classrooms for the children would be the point in focus because of its overriding linguistic and ethical issues. The paper discusses the educational search engines in general and its advantages and disadvantages. Stress is, then, given to EFL learner in an age group of 7-9 years and how search engines could contribute to their learning process. Finally ethical and moral dimensions of doing so are examined. Search engines are huge databases of web page files. It responds and takes the users to those web files they are looking for in the Internet. Search engines are particularly useful when the user does not know the website(s) where the information they require might be located. It is also widely used to find those websites of which users are not aware of the location. A comprehensive definition of a search engine is given by Teeler & Gray (2000): "a search tool that collects information from the Web by running an automatic program which visits huge numbers of web pages. It stores this information in a database and searches it by keyword when it receives your search request. It then provides you with a list of sites that include your keyword(s)." Search engines help people find information stored on other sites. While there are differences in the ways various search engines work, all of them search the Internet or select pieces of the Internet based on key words that is specified. By keeping an index of the words they find and its source, they allow users to view resources found in that index. Search engines, hence, operate by maneuvering through the web files stored in the global network. For the search engine managers, once developed, this is an automated process with only maintenance and updating required. A user connected to the Internet from anywhere in the world can avail these facilities with an ordinary Personal Computer of minimum hardware capacity and an Internet browser. Two types of search engines exist. There are individual search engines that compile their own databases on the web and there are 'metasearchers' that do not compile databases but search the databases of a cluster of search engines simultaneously. Based on this, a wide array of search engines exists catering to assorted needs often in a specialized manner. For broad educational requirements Academic Info (www.academicinfo.net/index.html), Britannica.com (www.awesomelibrary.org), Gateway to Educational Materials (www.thegateway.org) and Library Spot (www.libraryspot.com) are available with overriding academic focus and with their primary intended audience at the schools and university levels. Recognizing the learning requirements of the children a number of websites and web databases are available especially dedicated to them. Some of the prominent ones are Yahooligans! (www.yahooligans.com), Ask Jeeves for Kids (www.ajkids), Berit's Best Sites (www.beritsbest.com) and Surfing the Net with Kids Archive (www.surfnetkids.com). These sites are designed for young web surfers and are carefully reviewed, safe and recommended websites for children and contain literally all information that this segment of users need. Research is an important component of students' activities. Researching generally requires high access to a wide array of information. Furthermore, research usually is time specific, which is strictly enforced particularly to the students. Search engines effectively addresses these issues. With its use, a student can do practically any kind of research with all information at his desk on 'mouse clicks'. Therefore, students' inadequate access to information and time constraints are addressed providing them more time and wider choice of information. This is not only limited to research. A student can access any kind of information, any time, via the search engine. In this regard, incorporating search engine into the classroom curriculum is crucial. While most education system, as of today, does not even care to advise students on using search engine for accessing information, some of them, which do, are limited to just directing students to use it. Teachers usually give a topic to the students and suggest them that they may use search engines to access the information. It is left solely to the inexperienced student to navigate through this random collection of information. Often, students, overwhelmed by irrelevant information, become frustrated or derive very less information. While introducing students to this huge storehouse of information is useful, it is important that the storehouse is accessed correctly and fruitfully. Using search engine effectively is a scientific task requiring a broad understanding of the search engine system and its working modalities. Students must be adequately equipped with these skills so that they use search engine effectively, not much time is wasted in doing so and a host of irrelevant information does not overwhelm them. It is best to target the young since they are the most receptive of all. Young students, particularly those from reception to year 3, are the starters in the education system and an effective learning tool taught during these years could do wonders to their learning process. The teacher may begin by introducing them to the Internet and its huge storehouse of information. Once the students are familiar with the Web, small assignments could be given for them to do independently and in groups. It is essential, however, that strict monitoring should be done at this phase so that the young learners do not go haywire and be exposed to unwanted things in the Web. Based on the monitoring and the feedback of the students, more extensive searching via the Internet could be assigned. This would ensure a systematic learning process and a gradual expertise development in using the search engine by the students. Navigating via a search engine has never been an easy job for students and experienced users alike. Owing to the vast storehouse of randomly accumulated information, it is likely that the information searched is lost in the huge database of probable sites and the users go haywire, frustrated and often lose interest in the activity. Technology is highly beneficial to children as thinking skills are developed and an extensive amount of problem solving and testing continues to be done. It was found that a computer might actually stimulate the child to perform tasks otherwise not developed until the later stages. (Shelly et al., 2003). Nevertheless, learning via search engines often requires a high degree of linguistic dexterity. Many young learners encounter difficulties in this regard. Students in the age group of 7-9 years, in particular, possess inadequate vocabulary knowledge and keyword structuring as a result of which insufficient and irrelevant results are derived out of their 'searches'. To avoid this narrowing the searches and posting effective 'search requests' could be helpful. Herington (2002) suggests the following easy techniques: Word order: vary the order of keywords may produce different results. Compare a search for the topic "management and finance courses", (1 web page found), change this to "finance and management courses" (27 web pages found). Word families: it is useful to know that 'corrupt' and 'corruption' are within the same family. Experiment with these parts of speech will produce different results. For example, 'political + corrupt' (8,282 web pages found) and 'political corruption' (17,616 web pages found). Collocation: know which words go together may help students find relevant information. For example, "development and research"+"cars" (37,294 web pages found) compared to "research and development"+"cars" (65,383 web pages found). Frequency: use a higher frequency word as a keyword may be easier to find information about the topic. For example, searching for 'nuclear weapon' (6,607 web pages found) instead of the more frequent 'nuclear weapons' (22,475 web pages found) produced different results. A revolutionary aspect in the learning process, using search engines to locate information in the Internet have proven to be highly effective particularly to the students. Besides the ease in accessing the required information, search engines provide the users a wide choice of information sources and their respective contents. This has been particularly helpful for students since they are in a stage where a considerably huge source of information within easy access is crucial. University level students does have access to significant library resources, though their use is restricted to location, membership and is time sensitive. Such options are not open to children of primary and secondary level institutions (Robin et al., 1997). This implies that their resources are limited and are restricted to the locally available information. Access to the Internet, and search engine in particular, removes this hindrance faced by the students. Furthermore, besides expanding the amount of resources available to the user, the search engines also makes the process of acquiring materials much quicker than the traditional methods. It is therefore crucial that the teaching curriculum in the classrooms adequately address the use of search engines to access information. Searching for relevant information on the World Wide Web is often a laborious and frustrating task for casual and experienced users (Hlscher and Strube, 1999). While skills necessary for browsing individual websites seem to be available to users after only minimal training (Hurtienne and Wandke, 1997), considerably more knowledge and experience are required for query-based searching (Pollock and Hockley, 1997) and intersite navigation. It is relevant that students be taught to effectively navigate the Internet so that appropriate and relevant information is accesses and minimum time wasted in doing so. It is widely known that these attributes have made the Web an ideal mechanism for accessing information. However, the negative impacts and ethical problems surrounding it cannot be ruled out. It has provided an ideal platform for the distribution of pornography making young users particularly vulnerable to it. The infamous 'chat rooms' are also venues for mental and psychological harm for the children besides being potential source of physical injury. Studies have found that many computer-related injuries as bad as carpal tunnel syndromes are showing up in children. Students are highly susceptible to debilitating computer-related injuries. According to the National Academy of Sciences (1996), repetitive stress injuries plague between 13-20 million Americans. These injuries tend to show up mostly when the child is between ten and twelve years old. Finally, and the most important, the web is rife with bogus pages and deceptive information and users may be influenced by them easily. More so ever, it's surprising that even content from typically reliable, authoritative sources can't always be trusted. Since its beginning, search engines has quickly moved from being used by high end researchers to very young students. It is becoming an increasingly popular form of sourcing information. While the benefits of using search engines are paramount, an important question to ask is it being effectively and fruitfully used or are the users being simply taken for an irrelevant information joyride. Therefore, since students are the dominant users of information, they should be properly educated on it and made skilled at its use. By this they would be able to access appropriately the wide storehouse of information that the Web frequently boasts of. While search engine could be disadvantageous at certain areas and could mislead users, the advantages are numerous. The use of search engine definitely has been a milestone in the history of education. Bibliography Brown, S.A. (1997). Scholarly publishing using electronic means : a short guide. Newcastle : University of Northumbria at Newcastle. Chickering, A. W, & Ehrmann, S.C. (1996). Implementing the seven principles: Technology as lever. AAHE Bulletin, 49(2), 3-6. Christoph Hlscher & Gerhard Strube (1999). Web Search Behavior of Internet Experts and Newbies. Center for Cognitive Science, Institute for Computer Science & Social Research, University of Freiburg, Germany. (Available: http://www.vgk.de) Hurtienne, J., & Wandke, H. (1997). Wie effektiv und effizient navigieren Benutzer im World Wide Web Eine empirische Studie [How effectively and efficiently do users navigate in the WWW An empirical study] King, S.A. (1996). Researching Internet Communities. 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