There has been an increasing tendency towards the tremendous development of the Internet, which is thought to immensely supplant the role of conventional education in the cutting-edge era. Although the Internet is likely to be utilized worldwide and open up remarkable possibilities for self-paced learning, I firmly believe that schools will still be demanded by pupils to fully comprehend the material, and obtain thorough feedback from the teacher.
What separates the internet from how other advances in technology have impacted education is greater accessibility to information. It is no exaggeration to claim that nearly everything can be found on the internet. School age children can access educational videos on YouTube, read online articles and use interactive learning platforms. As they get older, the possibilities expand and include scholarly articles, video-conferencing platforms like Zoom, and online newspapers from every country in the world that can be translated to your native language in modern internet browsers. There is immense potential for autodidacts and parents who choose to homeschool.
Nonetheless, schools are the real world editors of the internet. A lot of news is thrown up instantly and not carefully vetted. This means that students can get led into dark corners such as alt-left and right websites that specialise in sensationalised propaganda. Children and teens are especially susceptible to what they read online as they might be less skeptical. Teachers have more life experience and their training helps them approach information critically. They can then pass these skills on to their pupils by teaching them how to read closely, spot biases, and check information through a number of primary and secondary sources. Without teachers, students are more likely to be indoctrinated rather than educated.
In conclusion, teachers are important to dispel the inherent risks of unreliable online information. Schools and administrators ought to take a long-view in order to assess the value of the internet for learning.