LEARNING SKILLS FOR OPEN AND DISTANCE LEARNERS

FACULTY OF EDUCATION AND LANGUAGES ___________________________________________________________________________ OUMH1103 LEARNING SKILLS FOR OPEN AND DISTANCE LEARNERS ___________________________________________________________________________ ASSIGNMENT TITLE: A) THE IMPACT OF INTERNET TO OUR SOCIETY B) FOUR BENEFITS OF THE INTERNET TO THE STUDENTS AND FOUR DETRIMENTAL EFFECTS OF THE INTERNET ON STUDENTS C) LOGICAL SUGGESTIONS TO REDUCE THE DETRIMENTAL EFFECTS OF INTERNET USAGE AMONG STUDENTS Name: Matric number: NRIC: Telephone number: E-mail address:

Tutors name: Learning Centre: SEPTEMBER 2012 Semester

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LEARNING SKILLS FOR OPEN AND DISTANCE LEARNERS

TABLE OF CONTENT A) THE IMPACT OF INTERNET TO OUR SOCIETY PAGE NUMBER 3

B) FOUR BENEFITS OF THE INTERNET TO THE STUDENTS AND FOUR DETRIMENTAL EFFECTS OF THE INTERNET ON STUDENTS

C) LOGICAL SUGGESTIONS TO REDUCE THE DETRIMENTAL EFFECTS OF INTERNET USAGE AMONG STUDENTS

D) CONCLUSION

LEARNING SKILLS FOR OPEN AND DISTANCE LEARNERS

A) THE IMPACT OF INTERNET TO OUR SOCIETY Have ever feel frustrated or getting to feel annoyed when you just cant remember the full lyrics of a song that you really love? Have you ever get tired when you need to search for some marvellous recipes to be cook for your wedding anniversary? Well, I can tell you that in the pre-Internet days, finding answer to the questions above would have involved looking through the reference books, skimming and scanning a newspaper or even making a visit to the library and however, all with no guarantee of finding that accurate nugget. Now, with the aid of the Internet, our society is really getting an easier life than how it used to be. For instance, the Google, the Internet search engine, it can deliver even the most incomprehensible and vague bits of information to your desktop computer within a matter of seconds. All you have to do is type in whatever you want to search for and then hit the button search, and then you may have hundreds to thousands of answer and you may look for the closest answer to your search. Now, first of all, according to the Readers Digest (2005), the first impact of Internet to our society would be no one need ever get lost. This is actually one of my favourite usages of the Internet as I am always so reckless and I have no sense in direction. When you want to go to somewhere or you want to reach a destination and you are unsure of the route, why worry? Sites such as streetdirectory.com have transformed car travel for direction-challenged folk. Whether it is a simple trip from C to D or a complicated route from Z to P, and then from P to U, its easy, you just have to punch in a few details and then it will instantly bring up a doorto-door list of guidelines complete with a map. Brilliant, isnt it? Moreover, with the aid of the Internet, everyone can be a publisher. Internet will be a platform for everyone to publish their thoughts and their stories in a fun and positive way. For example, try to sign up by using blogger.com or wordpress.com, you can begin your own journey of writing stories of your own and getting them published for people all over the world to read your story with just a click. Moreover, there are so many forums in the Internet, for example, in Malaysia, the most 2 popular forums that have more than 100, 000 members would be the Lowyat forum and also the Cari forum. This is another way for the society to be aware of the latest happening in the country. Not only that, the bank will be on your desktop as well. Banks start to provide online banking to ease our lives as in this modern era, everyone is very busy building up their own career and they wont have the time to go to the bank to queue up and just to fill in a couple of forms whether to apply for credit cards or to apply for housing loans. Therefore, the banks have already started their online banking service where with just a few clicks, we are
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able to transfer funds to another bank account or even check our balance through online. It is a very convenient way to pay bills and print out statements as well. Last but not least, the Internet actually helps everyone to be an expert in any fields, whether you are not a lawyer, mechanic, or even a doctor, you can actually look for information in any field that you want, for instance, when you are sick and you want to seek a doctors advice and you cannot put your full trust on that particular doctor, why not search for some information, starting by search for the symptoms that you have and then you will be in the win-win situation because at least you know what is happening to yourself and you can argue with the doctors if you sense something is not right about the diagnosis. B) FOUR BENEFITS OF THE INTERNET TO THE STUDENTS AND FOUR DETRIMENTALEFFECTS OF THE INTERNET ON STUDENTS One of the benefits of the Internet to the students is Internet actually plays the role as a platform for the teacher and the students to interact and get in touch after the school hours. Facebook is a tool for teacher and the students to get along to discuss the topics of the certain subject. Facebook is where the teacher can just post several questions or even a quiz for the students to accomplish, they just have to type the answers and hit the button send and then the teacher will be able to view the answers. In term of privacy, the teacher can actually create a closed group where he or she will only be able to invite students from his or her own subjects to join in and form a discussion group among themselves. The group will be locked and outsiders will not be able to enter and disturb the group. Moreover, students can also submit in their homework or assignment via online. Students can do that by clicking the option of message in the application of Facebook and then attach the documents that they are done with, and then they can send the documents via message privately. Not only that, if the students are not keen in using Facebook, they can just do it by signing in the yahoo mail or Google mail service and send everything to the teachers via e-mail. Indeed, the Internet has eased the students and teachers lives. Another benefit of the Internet is online learning. Students who need to get their work done at home and if they are having trouble to get to the school library due to lack of transportation or they live far away from the school itself, can just online and get into the library portal of the school and then type in the username and password, they can free to log in and look for journals and articles to read which the links will be provided inside. Moreover, if students who need to look for certain books and they do not have the time to check in into the library
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can just go into the library portal and search for the items, if the items are available, they may reserve online or call the library centre to ask the librarians to reserve the books for them. What an easy way of learning. Besides that, handicapped students have this advantages of learning at home as they are not convenient in moving around so much, plus according to Awais (2003), Malaysia is still a developing country and it does not have so many facilities for the handicapped ones in the school compound and the awareness of assisting the handicapped is still in a very low rate. Therefore, with online learning through the library portal or through the school system, for example, the LMS system, it brings benefits for all kind of students. Not only that, through the LMS system, the lecturers and teachers can just upload the notes through online and the students can just download them after they log in the system. The teacher can also raise any questions that he or she would like the students to participate in, and bonus marks can be given to them through their active participation. Another benefit of the Internet for students is it creates a bond between the students. Students in this country can stay connected with students from the other side of the world. Students can join the chat room or create a forum for students from nationwide to join that particular forum and they can share information on what they know and they can enquire for things that they do not understand. For instance, ACCA is actually taken by many students worldwide, however, they are grouped together in a chat room or a forum to discuss about the pass year questions, sharing information that different teachers might have given to them while learning the different lifestyles and cultures between the students. Moreover, Skype is also available for the students to video call each other and they can interact with each other visually, the most important point is it is free of charge and it will not give burden to the students to pay unlike the telephone bills. Internet strengthen the bond of learning as students from different places get to know each other and they learn from each other, especially in Malaysia where our English level is still not that sufficient compare to the other countries, but by using Internet to interact with the others, they have to use this universal language, they eventually learn from them. The last benefit of the Internet to the students that I would like to discuss here is the students can get the latest breaking news through the Internet. In this modern era, students are not interested in reading the newspapers especially when the newspapers are all in hardcopy and they might be lazy to get them to read, they would prefer to stay online, playing online games, chit-chatting with friends, or even busy updating their Twitter. Therefore, through the use of Internet, the students can eventually read the latest news from the online source, for example,
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in Malaysia, we have thestaronline.com, which the students can go into the website and they can read all the news that are occurring in Malaysia and some more, all the pictures are available as well, students will eventually more prefer to read them online, as while they are doing something, they can take some time to read the news, its like hitting two birds with one stone. Moreover, if they are doing their research on the current issues, they can just click into the archive of the newspapers section and then get any articles or news that they need to use to accomplish their assignments. Students usually have longer attention spans with technology than with other forms of traditional learning. Now, it is time for me to discuss about the negative effects of the Internet to the students. One of the detrimental effects of the Internet to the students is cyber bullying. It is unavoidable that students who are stepping inside the adolescent hood are still immature and they are the attention seeking type of person. Yes, Facebook is a tool for students and teachers to discuss about their homework outside the school, yes; Facebook is something that is so useful for the students especially for discussion and etc. but Facebook is also a tool for the students to take advantages of and conduct the cyber bullying. Students at the young age will tend to get jealous of each other and they find cyber bullying the best way to release their anger as it is hard to detect who is the hacker who does the crime. For instance, in Malaysia, each time we online, the IP address will be different, therefore if the students do any crimes, it is hard for anyone to detect who is the person who did it. Cyber bullying should be taken seriously because it might just take someones life because of that. Cyber bullying will cause a students mentality to be hurt and they wont be able to stand the pressure the other students laughing or teasing them, so in the end, they would prefer to choose to end their lives, and who to blame when this occur, of course they would blame in on the Internet as Internet has given the freedom to the students to do anything that they want beyond the limit. The second negative effect that I would like to discuss here is students will ultimately go online and search for pornography videos and pictures. Students are closer with their friends; that is for sure as they spend more time on schooling rather than with their parents, therefore, through the negative influence by their friends, they might just be curious and they will start surfing for things that they should not do or try. I have to say that this act can be addictive and they might surf for those websites on every single day and sometimes when it becomes a habit, it is hard to change the behaviour of that person. Moreover, by watching or looking at those videos or galleries, they might take the action to try it out and experience it in their own way. This might be dangerous of course as students who are still under age are not supposed
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to try all these and one step of doing the wrong thing might affect the students future, for example, accuse for raping, or just accuse for having sex with their partners. Many effects will eventually rise from this issue, for example, throwing away the babies as they are afraid that their parents might find out, raping their own sisters because they cannot control their desire of wanting to have sex and etc. The students might also try to find hooker online as well as sometimes when their parents cannot fulfil their needs, they fulfil them through the bribery of money and they have the cash to call for hookers through online. Next, the negative effect of the Internet to the students is students might isolate their own friends and family. We know that the Internet contains unlimited of information and services, consequently, excessively depend on it too much will cause the students to ignore the social interactions in the development. This is not to say that the Internet itself is bad, but it just being misused by the students. Students spend most of their time online, and they spend lesser and lesser time with their family and their real friends. For instance, students will just lock themselves in the room while surfing the Internet, if the parents need to ask them to come out from the room, they might need to as well, call their hand phones or text their hand phones just to call them out from the room as students can be very ignorant sometimes as while they are doing something with their friends through online, they will not go and care what is happening around them. Students will spend less time with their real friends or going out with their friends, as they prefer to do everything online, they can purchase anything online and they do not have to go shopping with their friends. Another example: Reuter reports, "A South Korean man who played computer games for 50 hours almost non-stop died of heart failure minutes after finishing his mammoth session in an Internet caf." Students would prefer to meet strangers online and they would likely prefer to chat with them and to get to know them better as it is like an exploration to them rather than talking to their friends that they have already known them for decade. They do not know the danger of talking to strangers, plus not all the strangers can be friendly and some just might be too dangerous for them. The last negative effect that I would like to discuss here is information fatigue syndrome. This might happen to students with advanced level of knowledge. Students love to look for information through online, however, there is an excess of knowledge available online. As a consequence, when there is too much information, a student might suffer from this syndrome as the student will become highly stressed through coping up with the huge amounts of information. The symptoms of Information Fatigues Syndrome include paralysis of analytical
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capacity, a hyper-aroused psychological disorder and anxiety and self-doubt leading to silly decisions and defective conclusions. C) LOGICAL SUGGESTIONS TO REDUCE THE DETRIMENTAL EFFECTS OF INTERNET USAGE AMONG STUDENTS There are several suggestions that I would like to propose here to reduce the detrimental effects of Internet usage among the students. One of the suggestions is control the childrens time when they are using the computer. Parents should set and fix a timetable for them to follow on the time which they can use to surf the Internet so that they will have a systematic lifestyle and not just sit in front of the desktop and stick their eyes to it. Parents can also supervise the children if they are younger than 10 years old, sit with them while they online, guide and help them so that he or she knows how to use the Internet wisely. Moreover, parents can use pop up blockers to block those offensive materials so that the children will not have the chance to click or look at the items. Next, the school can maintain a logbook as well so that they can detect students who have misuse the Internet for negative purposes and take action upon those students. The school can also regularly check the school computers to see which cites have been accessed by the students and warn the students that they will check by time to time so that they will use the Internet for granted. If the students are victims of cyber bullying, parents and the teachers can continue to keep an open communication channel with them so that they are able to share their problems with someone that they trust. Last but not least, parents and teachers should be good role model to them so that they will follow their footsteps and eliminate those negative points of their own. The school can also try to educate the students about the online dangers so that they wont go beyond the limitations. D) CONCLUSION In a nutshell, it is undeniable that the Internet has brought a high impact to our lives and it brings ease and fun to our society where we can get any information with just a click. It brings so many benefits to us that without the Internet, our life will be so dark just like we lost a sun in our lives. However, Internet will bring negative effects too especially to students if they take the usage of Internet for granted. Internet helps the students to get better each day and to equip them with sufficient knowledge so that they will be able to lead the world one day as they are the leaders of tomorrow, therefore, the society has to make sure that students are really making good use of the Internet.

LEARNING SKILLS FOR OPEN AND DISTANCE LEARNERS

REFERENCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY Reader's Digest. (2005, February Edition). Angellucifer. (2009, April). studymode.com. Retrieved November 13, 2012, from What Are the Negative and Positive Effects of Advance Technologies, Like the Internet, to Student's Performance?: http://www.studymode.com/essays/What-Are-The-NegativeAnd-Positive-200358.html Awais, B. M. (2003). Impact of Internet Usage on Students' Academic Perfomance (CPGA), 112. Lui, I. (1997). Internet has many benefits. College of Journalism and Communications, 1. "Man dies after 50 hours of computer games." Reuters Limited. 2006. 20 Jun 2006. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8888579/ Martin, M. a. (1997). The virtual classroom: the next steps, Educational Technology. Turner, S. (1999-2012). The Advantages of Internet in Education. Retrieved November 13, 2012, from http://www.ehow.com/facts_5549217_advantages-internet-education.html