Thoughts on E-learning

Happy Valentine's Day! I love what Google does with its logo on holidays! They're so very creative!

With that said, back to business...

What is E-learning? "E-learning is to classroom learning as cell phones are to a pay phone at the bus station." I thought this was a pretty clever way to put it. (It's on this website if you want to read more). The article goes on to explain that as long as you have a computer, you'll be able to learn anywhere, similar to a cell phone. With a cell phone, you'll be able to communicate anywhere.

Web technologies are definitely shaping education. One example is podcasting, which has become a popular technology in education. I just read about how Stanford University has teamed up with Apple to create the Stanford iTunes University! Rather than being a large collection of student/faculty playlists, this iTunes is quite unique in that it provides a range of digital content (although some are restricted to Stanford users). Talk about creative! There are also a lot of student-produced podcasts out there today.

The photo-sharing site Flickr is another great example of web technology (not to mention it's considered an early example of a Web 2.0 application) being used in education. I find that it's one of the better photo-sharing sites out there, you can easily share, manage, organize, and store all your photos. Plus users can comment on pictures and search for them based on "tags." All in all, a very nicely designed (free!) application. My favorite web-based Flickr toy is the postcard browser, which offers a really cool, fun way to browse through images with a specific tag. I won't try to describe it, just go try it for yourself and I think you'll see what I mean!

In education, Flickr provides a valuable resource for students and educators looking for images for use in presentations, learning materials or coursework. Students can also use Flickr to publish their digital photography to a larger audience and with the commenting function they can get critical feedback. Another handy feature on Flickr are the "notes." Notes allow users to add hot-spot annotations to an image. This is a great learning tool as it allows students to annotate and discuss the images in more detail.

These are just a couple of web technologies used in education. E-learning is still developing today (and everyday) and it'll be interesting to see how it changes in the future!