Approximately 225 millions of people can send and receive it and they all represent a network of potentially cooperating individuals dwarfing anything that even the mightiest corporation or government can muster. Mailing-list discussion groups and online conferencing allow us to gather to work on a multitude of projects that are interesting or helpful to us. Chat rooms and mailing lists can connect groups of users of discuss a topic and share ideas Materials from users to discuss a topic and ideas. Material from users can be added to a Web site to share with others and can updated quickly and easily anytime.
However, the most exciting part of the Internet is its multimedia and hypertext capabilities. The Web provides information in many different formats. Of course, text still a popular way to transmit information, but the Web also presents information in sound bites, such as music, voice, or special effects. Graphic may be still photographs, drawings, cartoons, diagrams, tables, or other artwork, but they also may be moving, such as animation video. Hypertext links allows users to move from one piece of information to another. A link might be an underline word or phrase, an icon or a symbol, or a picture, for example. When a link is selected, usually by clicking the mouse on the link, the users sees another piece of information, which may be electronically stored on another computer thousands of miles away.
Of major importance is the fact that the Internet supports online education. Online education introduces unprecedented options for teaching, learning, and knowledge building. Today access to a microcomputer, modern, telephone line, and communication program offers learners and teachers the possibility of interactions that transcended the boundaries of time and space. Even from an economic standpoint, the costs of establishing a brand new educational program for a new thousand students are far less than he cost of a building to house the same number of students. New social and intellectual connectivity is proliferating as educational institutions adopt computer-mediated communication for educational interactions. There are many school based networks that link learners to discuss, share and examine specific subjects such as environmental concerns, science, local and global issues, or to enhance written communication skills in first- or second- language proficiency activities.
Online education is a unique expression of both existing and new attributes. It shares certain attributes with the distance mode and with the face-to-face mode; however, in combination, these attributes form a new environment for learning. Online education, on the other hand, is distinguished by the social nature of the learning environment that it offers. Like face-to face education, it supports interactive 0group communication. Historically, the social, affective, and cognitive benefits of peer interaction, and collaboration have been available only face-to-face learning. The introduction of online education opens unprecedented opportunities for educational interactivity. The mediation of the computer further distinguishers the nature of the activity online, introducing entirely new elements to the learning process. The potential of online education can be explored through five attributes that, taken together, both delineate its differences from existing modes of education and also characterized online education as unique mode. They may learn independently, at their own pace, in a convenient time about a greater variety of subjects, form a greater variety of institutions or educators/trainers.
But no matter how great and significant the effects of the Internet in our lives might be, there are some quite considerable consequences and drawbacks.
A very important disadvantages is that the Internet is addictive. One of the first people to take the phenomenon seriously was Kimberly S. Young, Ph.D., professor of psychology at the University of Pittsburgh, USA. She takes it so seriously, in fact, that she founded the center for Online Addiction, an organization that provides consultation for educational institutions, mental health clinics and corporations dealing with Internet misuse problems.
Psychologists now recognize Internet Addiction Syndrome (IAS) as ne illness that could ruin hundreds of lives. Internet addicts are people who are reported staying online from six, eight, ten or more hours a day, every day. They use the Internet as way of escaping problems or reliving distressed moods. Their usage can cause problem in their family, work and social lives. They feel anxious are irritable when offline and caved getting back online. Despite the consequences, they continue using regardless of admonishments from friends and family. Special help groups have been set developing countries to give out advice and offer links with other addicts.