Tuesday 15 May 2012

Wiki-ing, Goggling and more


Every day I am googling


Look how the world has changed! I still remember around the time I was in 8th grade and so, every time I ran into something interesting, finding out more about it was an uphill and upbeat task, you had the reference books, then there was occasional newspaper write-ups, the not so frequent shows in the discovery channel or the National geographic and then there may be the library, a teacher who could help me out and many a times a really good dictionary. Those were my close friends’ every time I found myself fascinated by something or the other. But that’s all history now!

Goggling the World


I don’t even bother opening the dictionary these days and the last time I touched it was to dust it! Every time I see something I go to that fabulous website that can be termed nothing short of a window into the world outside. I Google! The refreshingly clean and no fizz home page of mine that gives me an answer to all my awkward questions even the ones to which my mother’s answer would be “stop asking such stupid questions”.


Simply enough Google has literally revolutionized the world and the rise of Google has been nothing short of a revolution in itself. But of all things it revolutionized it revolutionized the education sector most, free and open information was now freely available and any person who had a question in his mind had a place to ask it and hope to get an answer to it. You could follow anything you want you could study all that you can and want; there were no longer any restrictions. And the education was becoming more fun as it is meant to be. The single most important factor that made it possible is the ability to select and study any subject you want without the walls of a curriculum closing on you or any pressure being put on you. For the first time you were free! But what Google did was simple enough, it put everything there was on the internet and put it in a shelf so that we could find it easily, it opened the way to a hoard of services.


Wikipedia blackout against SOPA


Wikipedia : Creating a world with Free Knowledge


Then the next revolution in the world of world education ought to be the Wikipedia, a site so simple yet so powerful that it just changed the way we learn things altogether, the very definition and purpose of an encyclopedia is rewritten with Wikipedia. There is practically nothing under the sun that the Wikipedia doesn’t have an article about. Even the organizational hierarchy is worth the praise, an encyclopedia anyone can be part of the making. Whenever I want to know something, a place, a thing a concept, whatever it may be it’s a one stop place for information.


The internet has just realized its potential and is coming up with innovative ways to enrich the experience of education; the days when education was confined to the walls of the classroom and monochromatic black board are history. The education today is more an holistic approach and when its powers are truly extracted education can be real fun and an experience worth experiencing.

29 comments:

  1. THere still surely is a long way to go for the internet...nice post :)

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  2. Yes, these two have brought a revolutionary change in access to knowledge.

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  3. Sure, Wikipedia and Google are really helpful and they are indeed a revolution.

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  4. @Antarik Sure there can much be done in the sector of education and we do need a greater change, we require a moment!

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  5. @aativas Indeed they have, not a day passes without goggling for me!

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  6. @abhinav Sure they have haven't they and we just don't realize hoe much they influence us everyday at all!

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  7. At university my profs tell us not to rely so much on wiki because it's not "accurate" but sometimes, I do wonder...

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  8. @Tish You cannot totally blame them for telling that, Wikipedia is not authoritative and it can contain mistakes. Wikipedia is useful when you want to know about something, get a general idea abut to study you need to use books and listen to lectures.

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  9. As you said, seriously no idea if anyone uses a dictionary at all :)

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  10. good post,it is amazing-the whole cosmos in this tiny computer!

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  11. Wow! Congratulations for gaining a new reader because of your blog. (that would be me. Haha!) I'm actually impressed by the way you wrote this article. Well done!

    I only use Wikipedia if I would run out of resources to choose from because it's not that accurate sometimes. So in other words, it's my "emergency" resource during my high school and college years. Haha! And as for Google, I use it mostly to do my research, to use it as my temporary "dictionary" when I can't find a real one, and to write articles for school-related work and my blog.

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  12. seriously...internet is giving us something new everyday...all solutions are available here..though making us more paralized completely

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  13. the idea of focusing on the two break throughs in the history of the web is awesome! well written..

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  14. @jaish_vats So true, nobody has time to turn the pages these days!

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  15. @indi-chibber its true, you we all have a virtual life in the internet don't we?

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  16. @Angel Valdez I am flattered! thank you! I hope I could keep up to your expectations every time!

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  17. Well more than surfing through Google, we even open it as our homepage just to check whether our Internet works or not ...:P:P:P:P:P
    Joke apart..
    I call Google as my best friend these days...

    Ask it anything and it knows the answers... for even something like, "How to make warm water??"
    Ghosh !! It's crazy>> paagalpanti!!!!

    Wiki is moreover like Reserch Paper for me!!
    Something I wana know deep down, I go to Wiki..

    Cool as a post:):)

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  18. @Neha You are so true, we are almost completely disabled by the technology around, it must be impossible to survive sans these things!

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  19. @Anjali Google is my best friend too and any internet connection that doesn't give us Google is a bust, take apart Google and Wikipedia from our lives and we realize its half empty already!

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  20. Good post..
    And I like the write up. Indeed,Google and Wikepedia just keep the world open and little. But books shouldn't go obselete... They are like treasures..

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  21. i am indebted to google for the wealth of information that it puts at my disposal. however, one of the things about the internet is that it is not regulated, and while google tries to rank content according to authority, people are smart enough to figure out ways to beat it. additionally, its ad-words program itself is in conflict with the concept of unbiased rating, since even non-ad-words content providers use similar algorithms to jack up their rankings.

    while i concur with all that you have written in your post, i do regret the loss of regard for personal wisdom and knowledge that comes with it. in the pre-internet, pre-google and wiki days, we used to revere the people who knew things, and we used to seek opportunities to share time with them to add to our knowledge. google has replaced the sidhu-jyatha's for ever.

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  22. A substitute for life. we have indeed lost the idea to even think!

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  23. I pity the publishers of dictionaries.
    I concur.

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  24. And that is why there is a feeling that Google is on its way to own the world. ;)
    Lol about using google to see whether Internet is working to not.

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  25. Google has definitely changed the world. All you need is to gaze into Google and you have the answer to all the questions of the world. Google is better than the window.

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  26. I cant imagine a life without my google teacher :) :) the best teacher who knows everything :P :P nice post :)

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  27. I use google and wikipedia each and every single day of our life and hardly think about how it had changed our life. Your post had made me stop and think back about it.

    Nice post well written.

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come on! scribble down whats in your heart!