Advantages and Disadvantages of e-learning

Advantages :

1. You can do the study and tutorials in your own time or even if you live   in the countryside. There is no traffic problem. It is flexible.

2. There are a huge amount of information online, you can get them whenever you want. No time limited.

3. No handouts, no books, no papers. It is good for environment protection.

4. Less cost, good for international students.

To be continued…

 Disadvantage

1. There is no face to face classes, sometimes, the problems can’t be solved immediately.

2. Computer is not good for your eyes and health.

3. Less comparision with other students. You can’t see your actual level, so it is hard to make a progress.

To be continued…

http://www.e-learningguru.com/articles/art1_3.htm

So, e-learning is not suitable for everyone. It has to develop another years and years.

Definitions of Technology Options

Synchronous activities – where you can access the info immediately, at the same time only. webinars, msn, videoconference
Asynchronous activities – something you don’t get immediately, or that you can access at different times. email, etc
Formative Assessment – During the course, see how you are picking it up
Summative Assessment – At the end of the course, show your achievement
Email (electronic mail): Messages sent from one computer user to another.         Chat – Class discussion
Discussion forum – Qu&Ans, debate topics,
Web conference:(noun) A meeting of participants from disparate geographic locations that’s held in a virtual environment on the World Wide Web, with communication taking place via text, audio, video, or a combination of those methods. (verb) To participate in a Web conference.                                                                                                                  Simulations: Highly interactive applications that allow the learner to model or role-play in a scenario. Simulations enable the learner to practice skills or behaviors in a risk-free environment.                                                                                                                             LCMS(Learning content management system): A software application (or set of applications) that manages the creation, storage, use and reuse of learning content. LCMS often store content in granular forms such as learning objects.

Glossary of Terms

When I’m experiencing “e-learning”, there are lots of words that I don’t understand. Thus, an e-learning glossary is needed necessarily when I’m dealing with ‘e-leraning’.  Sometimes is misunderstanding when we are talking about e-leraning, but we are communicating in the different language. A collection of terms and their definitions help me “speak” e-learning.

An e-learning glossary website in my Delicious account is very useful and it contains lots of e-learning words. Also, you can type ‘e-learning glossary’ in google to research more. It helps me to fully understand those words which seem very professional to me.

For example, I’ve been known the term ADSL for a long time, but I actually don’t know what it stands for. Luckily, the glossary of e-learning tells me the answer. ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line): A type of DSL that uses the majority of the bandwidth to transmit information to the user and a small part of the bandwidth to receive information from the user.  Then I also know the meaning of DSL because of ADSL.

Delicious and Netvibes

I really like the Delicious and Netvibes websites. Delicious lets me understand what is bookmark and it provides a great space to have my own bookmarks and I can easily view other people’s bookmarks. Netvibes provides me my first contact with RSS feeds. The problem I found is that it is hard to find the webpages which have RSS feeds. So lots of websites can’t be added to Netvibes. Thus, Delicious is another good place to save these useful websites. I also tried some short online courses during the class, it was quite impressive and interesing. It is effective when people can have fun and learn knowledge at the same time.

My understanding of E-learning

When the frist time I saw the word “e-learning”, I thought this course must be dealing with computer as I did a familiar course called “e-portfolio” last semester. At the begining, I found this “e-learning” course is pretty much the same as “e-portfolio”. All we need to do is to create a new account for different websites. After 4 weeks dealing with “e-learning”, I think “e-learning” is quite useful and fun.

My definition of “e-learning” has been changed a lot after I read some readings online. Education via the Internet, network, or standalone computer. Network-enabled transfer of skills and knowledge. e-learning refers to using electronic applications and processes to learn. ‘e-learning” applications and processes include Web-based learning, computer-based learning, virtual classrooms, and digital collaboration. Content is delivered via the Internet, intranet/extranet, audio or video tape, satellite TV, and CD-ROM.

My first entry~!

Welcome to my blog!!! This is Karen from Shanghai, China. I’m currently an international student studying in UTS in Sydney. I’ve been in Sydney for more than 4 years, I have had a lot of fun here and met so many lovely friends.

Blogging sounds familiar to me. I’ve my space blog but it is hard to keep it updating. My space is a blog about my social life, my school life or something about me, my family, my friends. This blog is about e-learning, and it is effective if I have a educational blog.