e-learning - future of education?

Saturday, September 23, 2006

E-learning blog - Summary

Time is over!
My countdown clock definitely shows that time of writing blog is over (now the timer shows time after deadline). That’s why I decided to write summary posts.

What I have done?
Well...During 4 months (with some breaks) I tried to discover the possibility of e-tools that may give opportunity or threat publishers or just change the environment in which traditional textbook publishing house operates. Additionally, I went though many DBE tools that maybe or may not be use in e-learning.

Writing my blog I did it from the perspective of students/pupils in the age of 3-19 because WSiP (company I work for) operates in that segment. E-learning is for sure much more developed in the professional business trainings and in academic education. Today we can easily study on-line!

E-learning is the future of education!
However, we can not easily predict when the blackboard will be totally rid off from schools and would be replaced by electronic devices but I am convinced that process is only question of time. Why? It is cheaper, more attractive, more convenient and probably gives better results. Even it will not be implemented as a primary method of education in each levels (from many reasons) e-learning tools maybe used as supplement to more conventional methods.

Access to information (learning materials)
Nowadays, Internet is everywhere and we can find any information in it. Access to the information is not the problem anymore, the problem is to select them and find the best source of it. Thanks google that process is more and more easy but still not perfect!

Development of Web 2.0 and community-made-content always rise the problem of reliability of information. Look at wiki technology that from one side gives unlimited and free access to knowledge but from other sides still make suspicions of the value and reliability of the information.

Free information is a threat to publishers!
Open source movement and wiki based websites offering a free software and free access to knowledge maybe a dead-threat to publishers that take their profits from selling for instance books. Despite many of them says “we do not sell books, we sell knowledge” who will want to buy the knowledge if it would be (almost) for free.

Thanks!
Thanks to Rile for the course and assignment form and thanks to my blogger-mat! Special thanks to Borys, BelaMBA, Man1ana, e-grasshopper, DzejDzej, Blogproof for intersting blogs and comments. I wish I didn’t read all of the posts yet. ( I hope I will manage to do it)

It was new experience to write that blog. Even now I know I didn’t go through all of problems of e-learning. Probably each next day I will discover new tools and new ideas because internet is probably the fastest developing business environment.

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

LONELYGIRL15 not so lonely anymore...

Sunday, September 17, 2006

Our time in Sweden

Well, We are now in Sweden, Stockholm, Hotel Oden - I do not recommend.
We were sitting in the hotel and ... Integrate. Quite interesting. We met some students from Russian MBA and changed some opiononions. It is 2,45 a.m. I can not go to sleep without that post. :)
Tommorow is going home time. Good but I will miss it.

Forty4 from Sweden.
PS.
I wish that PC do not have an USB port.....

Friday, September 08, 2006

Less than three weeks left

posted by rille @ 14:16

Today I took a look at the situation. According to my notes there are 28 registered blogs, of which many are just one post. On the other hand, some of you are doing just fine.
I do not know how many students are in the class, but more than the registered blogs I guess. Most likely those who have not yet created a blog will not make an acceptable assignment.
Neither will those of you who have made only one or two posts...

Please feel to publish what you think about the assignment. Either as posts in your blogs, or by commenting others thoughts on this subject (but I might miss reading such comment).

And I hope you bear with me as I grade your efforts. Quite a complicated task...but you will help. More on that later on.


***

I confirm that such way of assignment is more time consuming. But let’s remember, that lot of that time we spent on learning blogging. Next time it will be easier.

I must say I like that form of assignment very much. I like it not only because it gives a real possibility to learn a lot and forces writing systematically. I like it because it gives a possibility to follow activities of other students. I can read their posts, exchange opinions, discuss. Thanks to that I will learn not only about e-learning (subject of my blog) but also about other problems or e-tools. Even if I did not follow all blogs at the moment (despite there are few of them) after you/we will grade them I hope I will have possibility to read them later on. (so dzejdzej please don’t delete your blog please!)

Unfortunately, despite good idea about blogging form I must say that it hasn’t worked as I expected. We have only few blogs that are published with more then 5 posts...

this text is also posted as a rill's blog comment

Saturday, September 02, 2006

e-learning hardware - short overview

The last element of successful e-learning system are hardware devices that support it. From the side of e-learning company/organization it is important to provide sufficient server infrastructure, capacity and data transfer. But that can be easy and is not discussed here.

To start e-learning operations we must also find out if our learners are ready to e-learning; are they equipped with necessary devices.

Maybe all bellowed devices are so obvious for many of us (PC, mp3player) but describing them I just wanted to pointed out how common they are today.

Laptop (desktop)
It is obvious that computer is one of the main device use in e-learning. In 2005 (most recent official data) 40% of polish houses (not people) had a computer (comparing to 36% in 2004). 30% had a internt connection. What is much more optimistic to e-learning - computer was in 56% (internet 38%) houses with at least one child.

Despite it is not so good achievement it shows that more then half of potential polish e-learning (in terms of school education) clients have possibility to e-learn! I think that time for e-learning really comes..

Statistic data about internet and computer according to polish Central Statistic Offices:
2005 polish only
2004 English only


mp3 players, mp4 players

Polish gadget of the year 2005! How can it be useful is obvious. I wonder while publishers do not start making podcasts with some parts of textbooks that would be easy to download and listen with mobile devices...
I can also imagine the educational web page that allow students share or publish their more or less professional podcasts.

Sony reader

Lets look a little bit in the future...
Sony corporation design in my opinion very nice and very user-eyes-friendly (as they describe) reader that allows to store many ebooks and read them easily. In my opinion it doesn't matter how many ebooks can it store, how much does it cost? The main think is that book can be read from much more user-friendly and mobile and pocket devices. As we know that it is not the problem of technology but rather starting mass production - then the prices will go down rapidly.

Reading from the Sony® Reader is unlike reading from any other digital device you've ever seen. Its breakthrough electronic paper technology provides clarity and resolution that rival paper itself. The 6-incscreenn1 is as easy to read in full daylight as indoors, and can be viewed from nearly any angle. Forgot your reading glasses? Enlarge text up to 200%. It's the way on-screen reading was always meant to be a book-like.
More you can find here


Other display technology
The problem of development of e-books (as a part of e-learning) is still the fact that paper is more user-friendly than any screen. From other side, individual printing of e-books is much more expensive then commercial printing. Printing on demad describedibed in post Publication on demand - the bridge between paper and e-book ) is a solution that in some situation mausefulfull but still make costs of printing. E-ink development is still in progress but also still in immature...Looks we have to wait a couple of years...