What Is the Negative and Positive of Internet on Education?

There are several positive and negative impacts of the Internet on education. For rural areas especially, the access to information that the Internet offers is an incredible positive force, allowing almost anyone to find the answers to basic questions simply and easily. It helps education in that when someone is curious about something (and therefore open to learning), they can find out some information to feed that "learning hunger" immediately. If you are curious about the ants in the backyard, or want to know more about dinosaurs or mythology... there is a wealth of information at your fingertips and you can enhance your knowledge.

On the negative side, some would argue that the Internet degrades the quality of research, throwing people into areas where the answers they find are low-quality guesses, at best. :) Since the Internet allows anyone to publish, finding high quality information is sometimes difficult. The internet also can be a huge distraction, like many other things, that distracts us from serious inquiry.

You can now study for a GED or get a degree online... immensely positive things. People in rural areas can now access much, much more information and have MANY more educational possibilities than they did before. ...but as this happens, does the average quality of such online education go down? Some would argue that it does, especially in the cases of for-profit universities or the plethora of low-paid, overworked, part-time teachers employed by the same. Will you get the same attention, quality, or knowledge? Who knows. Depends on the school, depends on the class, depends on the instructor. And you do run into similar problems even at very highly-respected schools.In the end, whether the Internet is positive or negative for education is always in how you use it, and how much you are motivated to learn... a motivated, enthusiastic student can drag an education out of even the worst teacher... and hopefully it works the other way around too.