The Information Age

Online Education

Online Education

Type 1 ~ Online Videos
Type 2 ~ Activities
Type 3 ~ Audio Books
Type 4 ~ E-books
Type 5 ~ Educational Games

My ranking, in order of what I would learn best, would have to be:

1. Activities ~ This gets your mind thinking and gets you to figure the answers out for yourself.

2. Online Videos ~ I find it easier to learn when I can see actually it working. There are many videos that enable you to see things happening and then I find it is easier to remember

3. Educational Games ~ These are quite fun, but they still teach you at the same time. If you use these too much they probably wouldn’t help, but with moderation they can help you to enjoy your learning.

4. E-books ~ I do not find these very good, as I do not enjoy sitting at a computer reading. I would much prefer the real book in front of me so I could read it on paper. Looking at the screen for too long can hurt your eyes.

5. Audio Books ~ These I feel are the most ineffective for me to learn from. This is because just hearing a voice without seeing the person talking can make you switch off a lot easier than usual. If you listen to it for a long time it can make you sleepy and you can get bored quite quick.

Online Simulations

Online Simulations

I think that the website showing you how to dissect a frog is great. It lets you in to know what you have to do when you come to do it for real. It has a lot of helpful resources, such as a video of how to do it, as well as pictures and an audio commentary. Even at certain points there are quizzes and interactive picture for you to try to recap on what has already been said. It showed me that, online simulations can be very detailed and extremely helpful. It saves the teacher having to repeat his/her-self many times, because if you are stuck you can just watch the video and remind yourself of how the demonstration went. I think that these online demonstrations will become more popular in the future for showing the pupils what to do in an experiment, e.g. in science.

Sam :0)

Evaluation on Science Museums Site

Science Museum - 'Making the Modern World'

The purpose of this site is to be an educational resource for children; I think it fulfils its purposes. The reason for this is because it is simple and uses language that children and teenagers would be able to understand. It has a lot of flash objects in it, to make the whole experience more fun, as things are moving and things happen when you click buttons. There is a good use of colour on it too. It is simple, but with the colour they do use, e.g. the white background with red and yellow stripes, it enables the reader to still see the content clearly without it becoming too distracting.

I think this website shows that online learning can be very fun and interesting. There are many interactive ways they can use to get the audience involved with things happening on the webpage. It can help people who find learning difficult to enjoy it and find new ways of teaching themselves.

Sam :0)

Usenet Newsgroups

I have been looking at newsgroups on the internet to find out more about the digital divide.

The main one that I looked at was:
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/bnyee/browse_thread/thread/a82e728b864655aa/c0d4508e18e99b2d?lnk=st&q=&rnum=8&hl=en#c0d4508e18e99b2d

This was a very interesting article that someone had posted. It spoke about how the digital divide is greater between people of different nationalities. It shows that using a computer or logging onto the internet is just not as important for some races as others. There was a sizeable difference between white people that used the net, then there were Hispanic or Asian.

For a lot of people in the world, using a computer is just a normal day to day thing, but in other less developed countries, having a computer is just for the rich. Using these precious resources open your eyes to many more things in the world. For example, job opportunities and around the world news. We really do take for granted many of these things.

One advantage of using usenets newsgroups is that you can get many poeples views on things.

Sam :0)