It took me a while to continue writing in this blog.
I just read through some of the other definitions.. it is very interesting. I had to make myself a mind-map to organise my thoughts. Would be good just to out it here, but that means an advantage using with the pc, which I don´t have tonight. Maybe some other day.
I went through my links and I think the first one gives the best definition about e-learning:
“e-Learning is an umbrella term that describes learning done at a computer, usually connected to a network, giving us the opportunity to learn almost anytime, anywhere. (…) ” http://www.worldwidelearn.com/elearning-essentials/index.html
This is very short, but I think it gives the most important thing of what e-learning in its basics means.
Part 2
What are your expectations from eLearning, when is it useful, what are advantages and what is missing in eLearning compared to presence learning?
Further on the webside they talk about different learning types the people have. Some are good in reading and writing. For these people online learning is a good thing-, for others who prefer to speak and interact face to face it might be more difficult. everyone has to decide for himself if e-learning can be an advantage.
I think it is like Daniel wrote in his blog: http://itsme.edublogs.org/2008/04/10/to-task-2/ If people have a long way to get somewhere for learn something it is a big advantage to communicate through e-learning.
After school I stayed 10 months in Australia and there, in the outback, the kids have no choice. I lived on a farm where it took more than two hours to the next cities. So the children had homeschooling over the internet. Everyday they had one lesson with a headset in a classroom with lots of other children all from different places. The rest they had to learn, they did by a book at home.
Maybe it´s also a bit like this “second life” thing. Last tuesday I was in the reading “Medien & Bildung” with Torsten Meyer and they had two guys speaking about “second life” and having readings in there etc. It was really interestin thou I am not sure if I like the idea or not, but a big advantage is that people from all over the world can come together at the same time and talk together. I think this is really great!!!
Part 3
Please name 2 Settings, Situations or Contents where eLearning is a good solution, in your opinion and why.
I already mentioned in the second part that I think e-learning is great for people who leave outside of a big city like in my example the guys in the australian outback.
Another thing is learning a language. I am learning spanish since one year. And these days I started to get some mp3´s on my mobile to learn vocabularies and I also did free online courses on the Internet or lent me Cd Roms from the bibliothec.
For me this is really good, cause u can listen to the pronunciation, speak it through the headset etc.
One disadvantage is, that u can´t talk to other people and withour conversation u can´t really learn a language. But I am sure that there already might be conversation courses in the virtual world.
That´s it for tonight and I think I already forgot how to make a trackback…
Bye
And I like it. It reminds me as I already said in the comment (Comment by Luise on April 18, 2008 @ 2:58 pm) of freedom and beeing free.
