Is Online Education More Effective Then Traditional Education

While the idea of an "online education" is very attractive it proves to be very ineffective, less effective than what one might call a "traditional education". My opponent brings up several points that, on the surface, can be appealing but aren"t effective in practice. "It can give access to websites that students find useful. " Yes the internet can be a very useful tool for research and other school related work but there are many downfalls to the use of the internet at school. As Pro has stated there are many websites that can assist students in their research and their work, but you can find just as much information in books. Sure you can argue that the is a lot more information available on the internet for learning purposes, but does that really make "online education" more efficient. The simple answer is NO. Pro brings up the point that "Kids sometimes enjoy the internet more [than] a pen and paper. " but the thing is that in this day-and-age kids enjoy the internet too much. In class it is hard enough to keep students focused on the lesson and to keep them off their smartphone. When given access to the internet it is practically impossible for them to stay on track. This issue has been addressed and school networks work to block websites that aren't beneficial but you can't block them all. There is no way to ensure that when you are using the internet in your class that the students will not stray off topic and browse the internet. When you can"t keep the kids on track during the lesson and ensure that what they are doing and interacting with is related it is not efficient at all. In your "traditional" pen and paper education students are given access to a huge amount of information, you just have to put in more effort than typing your query into a search engine. Encyclopedias, textbooks, magazines, audio and visual resources, are all available in used in a "traditional education" and are all just as effective as those available on the internet. The use of pen and paper is much more effective in the sense that all kids have the same textbooks and resources available and the teacher can manage how productive the students are. When you are assigned something and the teacher tells you which chapter, which section, sometimes even what page or where to find the information you can be sure that they aren't just goofing off or reading something entirely unrelated. Online education also removes the human factor of education. Humans are social beings and learn from other humans and the things around them, but with an "online education" there is no face to face included, you are just reading text on a screen or watching somebody do something on video. Somethings require physical presence and careful help to successfully learn something and you can't do that over the internet. On the point of storage I agree that computers and the cloud have a huge potential and a lot of space available however computers a very prone to crashes and lost information. When you are relying on your information being stored on a computer you can lose it in a heartbeat, compared to having physical notes, textbooks and the like that can be kept safe even if the power goes out.