Wednesday, April 24, 2013

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND MY HIGHER EDUCATION EXPERIENCE



 The world as they say is a global village. With a push of a button, you could reach Europe from Africa, buy goods as a Nigerian from far away China and even get to know what is happening around the world from your livi...ng room. Letter writing, Post Offices are gradually phasing out in this age which some refer to as the 'Information age' as everything seem to have gone online that is why it is now common to hear words like E-mails, E-commerce, E-networking, E-conferencing, E-marketing etc.
Information technology(IT) being an integral part of life today have applications in Medicine, Engineering, Agriculture, Communication, Marketing etc which is why its importance in Education cannot be overemphasized. As a student in a Tertiary institution, a large percentage of my graduate work would not be accomplished without IT. My school fees for example from first year down to final year was paid online, hostel allocation was done online while I went to the Student Affairs department with the printout which was scrutinised and confirmed before I could check into the hostel. My course registration was done online as every student has their own page on the Students' portal. I was able to do research for my seminars and carry out some assignment right from the comfort of my hostel room due to Google-powered Wifi which the school's administration made available to every student in a bid to enhance learning. My seminars were presented with the aid of a Projector and Power-point slides in order to drive home some of the points made. When I was Editor-In-chief of my departmental magazine, I was able to conduct an interview session with ease via the internet with one of the lecturer who was away in far away United Kingdom owing to Information Technology. Also, I was able to start my blog where I talk about some issues in the Nigerian society and which helped in boosting my writing skills.
Apart from the very positive impacts of Information Technology, there are some other negative impacts. I could remember going to the toilet on a particular night, upon getting to the Tee end (a word which students of UNN use for the toilet end), I met a fellow classmate confidently browsing and downloading porn. When I spoke to a friend about that, his reply was 'It is normal, that guy's nickname is Porn Hub and he is a major supplier of any type of porn'. Also, some of us spends more time 'wasting' on social networks, downloading and watching movies leaving little time for our assignments as it is common to find some students still in chapter two of a four chapter assignment on the fortnight of submission. Due to the advent of Information Technology, there seem to be limited usage of the library by students as 'Copy and Paste' becomes the order of the day leaving little room for research.
I am indeed happy to be a part of this 'privileged generation' as some of our lecturers would call us because as they would say, they had to travel long distances just to get internet access which I get from the comfort of my hostel room. They had to browse through thousands of catalogues in the library, sometimes travelling to other states in search of some materials but the combination of various search engines and scientific databases gave me the same materials in a matter of minutes.
Although there are some negative impacts, Information Technology made my higher education experience enjoyable and a little less stressful.


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1 comment:

  1. It sure has its good sides and bad sides! Funny thing is, without it one is outdated. #Sad

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