The Internet and Education

The Internet and Education

The Internet has become an increasingly important feature of the learning environment for teenagers. Research by the Pew Internet & American Life Project shows that teens use the Internet as an essential study aid outside the classroom and that the Internet increasingly has a place inside the classroom.

Here are some of the significant findings from a survey of 754 youths ages 12-17 conducted last November and December:

• 94% of youth ages 12-17 who have Internet access say they use the Internet for school research and 78% say they believe the Internet helps them with schoolwork.
• 71% of online teens say that they used the Internet as the major source for their most recent major school project or report.
• 41% of online teens say they use email and instant messaging to contact teachers or classmates about schoolwork.
• 34% of online teens have downloaded an online study aid.
• 18% of online teens say they know of someone who has used the Internet to cheat on a paper or test.
• 58% of online teens report using Web sites that had been set up specifically for their school or for a particular class.
• 17% of online teens have created a Web page for a school project.

Here are some of the key findings from a survey of 754 of the parents of those youths:

• 87% of parents of online teens believe that the Internet helps students with their schoolwork and 93% believe the Internet helps students learn new things.
• 55% say the Internet has been a good thing for their children; only 6% say it has been a bad thing; 38% say the Internet has no effect one way or the other on their children.
• 55% say that it is essential for today’s children to learn how to use the Internet in order to be successful and another 40% believe it is important.

Gen modifications

Genetic Modifications

It is an interesting fact that most proposals of improving the human body in transhumanistic discussions are mainly based upon bionic and chemical enhancements, while overlooking the potential of genetic engineering. In part this may be due to the fact that most methods of changing the genome is most efficient only on very small groups of cells or in the embryo. This means that these methods will mainly work on our children, not on ourselves, something which has made many transhumanists turn to other methods. However, genetic engineering has obviously great potential to transform living beings, it is already an viable technology (unlike bionics) and gene therapy is advancing fast. Perhaps most important, and controversial, is the fact that this method will not only change a single individual, but also affect all of his/her/its offspring. This will give us the ability to once for all eliminate certain genes or add new ones.
In the following I will mainly deal with modifications which are possible according to what we know, and reasonable extrapolations of current technology. This means that most of these enhancements will work only on the molecular level and not in the lesser understood areas of morphogenesis or other high-level functions.


               Types of gen modifications 


Simple Modifications
These modifications are mainly concerned with removing undesirable parts of the genome and changes between different naturally occurring alleles.

Removal of genetic defects

Removal of genetic diseases

These two categories overlap to a great extent. They include mutations of important genes, omissions or accidental overlaps in the genome. Many diseases seem to have an genetic factor, for example Alzenheimer's disease, glaucoma, certain forms of obesity, retinal detachment, diabetes II and cancer, and there are many more geners that weaken the body or make some diseases likelier.

Removal of undesirable traits

Of course, what is undesirable is often a highly individual matter, and many negative traits are linked to positive traits in a complex manner. For example, the "novelty gene", which induces "novelty-seeking behavior" (i.e. adventureness) will under the right circumstances make a person a dynamic neophile, but could also increase the risk for to drug addiction (Reward Deficiency Syndrom); Dyslexia might be linked with visual thinking

Nanotechnology

WHAT IS NANOTECHNOLOGY ?

Nanotechnology is science, engineering, and technology conducted at the nanoscale, which is about 1 to 100 nanometers.

Photo of Richard Feynman
Physicist Richard Feynman, the father of nanotechnology.

Nanoscience and nanotechnology are the study and application of extremely small things and can be used across all the other science fields, such as chemistry, biology, physics, materials science, and engineering.


The ideas and concepts behind nanoscience and nanotechnology started with a talk entitled “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom” by physicist Richard Feynman at an American Physical Society meeting at the California Institute of Technology (CalTech) on December 29, 1959, long before the term nanotechnology was used. In his talk, Feynman described a process in which scientists would be able to manipulate and control individual atoms and molecules. Over a decade later, in his explorations of ultraprecision machining, Professor Norio Taniguchi coined the term nanotechnology. It wasn't until 1981, with the development of the scanning tunneling microscope that could "see" individual atoms, that modern nanotechnology began.