Wiki-ing, Goggling and more

Look how the world has changed! I still remember around the time I was in 8^th 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 : 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.