Some call them crusaders. Some get even a little bit high and get zombie-fied. Some fail. Some never forget to go home.
The kids are in. The kids are drawn to the online games. The kids are nowhere to be seen. At home. At the park. Not showing up for dinner. For lunch. Never see the daylight for breakfast. The new kids are eaten by the system.
Truly, what’s happening with our kids now is alarming. They are secretive. One minute they are active. Next thing you will see, grades are failing. Eyebags are graying. Notebooks are empty. Brains are in fact empty.
Computer games are stress relievers. It can help you make friends or even help you establish an online romance. One game couldn’t hurt, but when does it reach its breaking point? When is it too much?
For good reason, the Internet is buzzing with positive information about online education. The advantages are numerous, from lower costs to accessibility to flexibility. However, a quick look around the real world clearly demonstrates that most students are still choosing traditional classes. Are these people just ignorant? No. There can be multiple drawbacks to online education in comparison to traditional classroom education.
1. Lack of accreditation and low quality – Before you enroll in any online course, check that the program is accredited and verify this information with the accrediting agency. Legitimate schools, from established universities to newer online colleges, are proud of their status with accrediting agencies, and agencies are happy to accredit good schools. Therefore, this information is readily available online for you to check.
If you earn a degree from a school with no accreditation, you can find yourself with a worthless degree that will leave you in debt and no better prepared for the workforce. Verifying an online program’s accreditation is a small step that can save you time, money and heartache in the long run.
2. Little or no face-to-face interaction – While this may seem obvious, students have a tendency to underestimate the impact of never meeting the instructor and other students in the class. Mark Edmundson, an English professor at the University of Virginia, argued in a Time opinion piece that online education creates a “monologue and not a real dialogue” in the learning environment. Building relationships with your instructor and classmates will require more effort in an online environment.
3. More work – Online courses typically require a greater amount of reading and assignments than traditional classes. Programs in general are improving the quality of their online courses, and this means that students will have to do more to prove that they’ve mastered the material. Expect to spend at least 10 hours per week on each online course. However, it is not uncommon for a single course to require 15 or 20 hours per week (source).
4. Intense requirement for self-discipline – Online courses usually have deadlines for assignments, tests, commenting on lectures, etc. That’s not the problem. The problem is the time management and organization skills necessary to stay on top of your work, allot an appropriate amount of time to complete each task and balance your coursework against other priorities in your life. If you tend toward procrastination, then you might need to strengthen your skill set before choosing an online course or program.
5. Even more intense requirement for self-direction – Traditional college programs typically offer or even require that students meet with advisors to help them plan their path in college. If you only need a course or two, this is not an issue. However, if you are pursuing an entire degree online, you will need to be proactive in finding the information you need to ensure that you are taking the right classes for your degree plan. Straying from this path could constitute failure to make academic progress, and you may have trouble securing financial aid.
If you visit internet cafes all over the Philippines, you will notice that most young people from the age of 8 to 30 are hooked into playing online games. A lot of these young people do not go to school anymore just to play. And parents don’t have knowledge that this problem has been going on.
Playing these games may also be viewed unhealthy. In one occasion, a kid from New Zealand collapsed for playing 16 hrs straight without eating and much needed rest. Game companies and publishers usually wash hands when asked about the issue.
These games are not just addictive but also they get money from the players. Gaming publishers say that the games they publish are “Free To Play” with no monthly fee, But, there are micro payments. Players are partially required to buy Items from the Cash Shop, and most game publishers are taking advantage on this part making huge profit from our poor young people. Parents worked hard to give their kids allowances, and yet their kids use his/her allowance for the game.
Even a campaign in every municipality in the archipelago has not intensified for the past ten years. Looking back, the City Government of Masbate established an ordinance that prohibits setting up computer shops which should be not be nearer than 200 meters. However, there are still gaming/computer shops which have not complied with the prohibition. Some have put up even nearer seducing kids along their way to the school and going home about. The funny fact about the whole scenario is that these shops are duly permitted by the local government to operate.
There should have at least a special force that would regularly check these shops, even provided the fact, that they have been permitted for educational purposes only, that includes to “educational searches”. But truth and in fact, the computer itself is loaded with online computers games.
And we parents should be warned by the growing numbers of youngsters getting hooked up with a new kind of addiction. Added to this dilemma is buying our kids tablets and android cellphones that’s even more appealing to their fragile mind. We only give them the free way to search the web with only just connecting to free WiFi.
We, as responsible parents, should let our kids be kids. Let them play. Let them search the life of being a child. Let them experience playing. Let them be hurt. Be wounded. Wounds from running in the fields. Or from falling in a bike. Please don’t take away their innocence.
Published and Owned by: JANETH F. ALMOGUERRA- Teacher III