E-learning (Copy pasted my original post from the Effective Internet Research Discussion Forum)
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Briefly explain how Internet has enriched your social and academic life. Illustrate your answer using TWO Internet resources you had learnt in EIR.
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The Internet has come a long way since its initial humble beginnings. Today, the Internet has drastically changed the way people communicate with each another. I suppose now a days, the younger generation talk more online rather than in real life, with the popular inventions of MSN, Facebook and Emails. However, as we are behind our computer screens, we tend to speak more openly as there is no form of eye contact with the other party.
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The Internet has enriched most of its users and my social life greatly. If there is no Internet in the world, people can only rely on telephones and frequent meet ups to socialize. MSN has allowed me to communicate with my friends and former classmates easier. There is no form of so called "barrier" between us, as there is no need for eye contact, body language or having to watch the way we speak. However, the only negative point is that there is no feelings in our communications. Sure, MSN has emoticons to express how we feel, but do you think the other party really feel the same when they use an emoticon?
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Academic wise, the Internet can really compete with books as a source of education. What ever you would like to find out about, the Internet has anything. I read about new species of animals discovered online and enjoy seeing images of airport architecture. Animals may have nothing to do with my course (Environment Design), but it improves my in depth knowledge towards animals.
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The Internet resource that I have learnt in EIR and is a part of my fondest memories is mainly Twitter. Twitter is quite cool on the social side of the Internet. It improves your social life as you can comment on other people's tweets and people can comment on your tweets. The best thing is, you can follow a celebrity on Twitter and there is somehow a form of connection between you and the celebrity. So, your social life not only revolves around you, your family, and friends, it also extends out to celebrities too.
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For research purposes, do you think Internet resources are the only resources that you can depend on for effective research? Justify your answer with an example.
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Internet resources are not the only resources that we can depend on for effective research as some content may be untrue or inaccurate. For example, my course is Environment Design, and most of the time, the lecturers encourage us to do our research by borrowing books instead of using the Internet. Personally, I feel that Internet resources are on par with books as effective research resources. However, sometimes, the best architectural images can only be found in books and not on the net. Moreover, using the Internet to reserve the book that you need from the library is much easier than scanning the net when all you get is a tiny bit of relevant information.
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However, slowly, we have come to ignore the presence of the usefulness of books as the overly convenience of the Internet has overpowered us.
