School in the Era of the Internet

Abstract

School systems are challenged by today’s quickly changing world with new and complicated problems. We live in an era marked by an explosion of information, as illustrated by the fact that the amount of information doubles every year. The cultural change of a revolutionary nature we are now observing, one element of which is development of the Internet towards the Web 3.0 model, is associated with depletion the culture of writing and the cognitive apparatus associated with it; that is, cause and effect thinking, linear understanding of time, and an objectivist understanding of the world. The omnipresent electronic media, which use an entire range of audio-visual means of communication, are main “production techniques” of culture, including the current visual culture. They constitute the context in which schools function and, at the same time, they pose a considerable risk to them. The computer is almost as common today as a wristwatch, and the owner has immediate access, at any time, to all contents and services in all forms that are available on the Internet. It is worth considering how this popularization of access to the Internet influences education.