Reply to post:

Parents blame brats' slipping school grades on crap internet speeds

sisk

To be fair any school project that relies upon research is going to also rely pretty heavily on the Internet these days. Sure, going to the library is going to be an option still, but it's been a few years since libraries have seen it as worthwhile to keep up-to-date research resources in book form as a priority. Yes, they still buy new books that, yes, can be used for research, but these days the Internet is the go-to reference source. Even when using books and science periodicals people normally use the Internet to figure out which ones they should be looking for.

On top of that savvy students are well aware that if they're not getting a concept from their own teacher - which happens because not all teachers teach the same way and not all students learn the same way - they have free access to dozens or hundreds of teachers online teaching the same concept who might explain it in a different way. You can even see entire course lecture series from some of the best teachers in the world. As an example, a few years back I watched the entire lecture series from a class on black hole mechanics taught at MIT just because I thought it was interesting. I retained little more of it than I would from a Discovery Channel documentary (I was, after all, only interested and not actually studying the subject) but can you imagine how useful that sort of resource would be to a student studying astrophysics?

I don't actually think a good student would see their grades fall due to slow Internet, but I could definitely see a good student raising their grades with good Internet.

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon