Educating children is a more difficult task today than it was in the past because they spend so much time on cell phones, online games, and social networking website. How far do you agree or disagree with this statement? v.4

Nowadays, thanks to modernisation, the method of teaching has changed considerably compared with decades ago. Developments have led students to spend more time on a variety of electronic communication devices and to become less flexible when it comes to learning lessons at school. However, I personally believe that the overall quality of learning has been fundamentally improved. On one hand, in the past, teaching children was far simpler. One reason is that they did not have any access to other study resources. They had to follow their instructors’ rules to learn from theoretical and practical materials instead of using the Internet. For example, to learn English, students mostly used school laboratories and only listened to materials recommended by their teacher. Now, students can listen and participate in hundreds of online courses through the web, each with different strategies which often confuse learners. Another issue is that cyber-addiction has lead children to spend less time studying their basic books. Playing video games, which are upgraded every month, chatting on Facebook or texting friends mean children find less opportunity to study and practice their lessons. On the other hand, some social networks and telecommunication systems are extremely useful to children. The primary factor is online learning which has become a popular method of teaching in many countries. For instance, to learn biology, children can search and find a variety of topics on the web in few seconds, or download their favourite video lessons by paying a very modest amount of money. Tutors, therefore, spend only a few hours teaching the related subjects in school. Furthermore, social networks have assisted pupils in understanding the materials better. Obviously, in many schools, colleges or even universities, students are encouraged to create study groups and participate in discussions, collecting information far more easily than in the past. In particular, at MIT in the USA, students have private accounts and can connect to any other student in the US university system. This gives them access to a far wider range of materials, ideas and approaches to data than learning in the past. In conclusion, although children had more time to study classroom materials in the past, now they get a better quality of teaching. In my view, online learning and participating in vast educational study groups has led them to learn than in the past.