Clear Creek student David Ledo recently won a scholarship with an essay he wrote that answered the question, “How has the internet impacted your education?”

I know you will enjoy reading his winning answer to that relevant question in education today.

“The word ‘impact’ does not give justice to the mark that the internet left on my education. The internet has dramatically changed my life. I was born in 1989 to Vietnamese immigrants who knew nothing about technology. Two years later the internet also came into the world. I was not able to see the internet at its infant stages because I myself was an infant. However, I was alive and fortunate enough to see the internet become commercialized and accessible to everyone. My parents were refugees from the Vietnam War so they could not afford the internet or even a computer when they were starting to get popular. However, when I enrolled in public school, I was able to use a computer for the first time in the library. That is the first time in my life where I connected to the entire world. That moment would forever shape the course of my life. The internet changed my landscape, gave me access to infinitely valuable resources, and fueled my imagination for the rest of my life.

“The first time the internet shaped my education was when I was in kindergarten. I was having a hard time adjusting to school because I did not know the language. My parents barely spoke any language when they first came to America. They had full citizenship but they struggled to learn a second language at their age due to the lack of resources. However, I was more fortunate since my school started their first ‘ESOL’ program. The English teachers were able to teach me English for the first time simply by emailing people for hand-typed resources. Things like Google Translate did not exist back then. Thanks to the internet, I went from a kid of an immigrant who spoke no English to being one of the brightest students in the school. As soon as I was able to grasp English, I was able to understand complex concepts and ideas that made school actually enjoyable for me. For the first time in my life, I could understand the other kids. This event may seem small and insignificant but it opened a very large door for me that I could not open on my own without the help of the internet.”

… To be continued in next issue.