Sunday, November 24, 2013

5: E-learning


What Most Schools Don't Teach

When we talked about e-learning in class, we talked alot about how learning can be aided through advanced technology and tools with the access to the internet. However, I felt that we did not look at it the other way around, how students are not learning about the internet and how it works. Many of the well-known successful people in the world today have a common attribute, that is they know how to code. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg are the creative geniuses behind innovative companies that have guided the world into a new era of ideas and technology.

For all that we know about them and their companies, we still do not know even the basics of what made them famous - Coding. Therefore coding is really very important. Students should have the option to learn coding. It has become a lifeskill for the future generation.

I would really like to say that watching online videos and tutorials really help make learning easier, especially for very visual people like me. I like to be able to see what I have learnt and visualise it so that I can remember it better. Below are some videos that are very educational. Even though 20% of the people on the internet produce content and 80% look at the content, there is still so much information floating around, waiting to be learned and read and watched and studied and heard. Because we now have so many resources online for free! We should maximise our opportunity and appreciate it. Because of the internet, education has really been made accessible for all.


The Science of Persuasion


What makes a Hero


How to teach yourself Coding

However, is it possible for us to become more lazy because of the information we now have? We keep thinking that the information will always be there for us when we need it. But is that true? Do we really need all these things to learn. 

In the October issue of Wired, there was an article about a small classroom of students in Mexico. They were poor and limited Internet access, yet they managed to all do well in the national examinations, emerging in the top ten percent of their peers nationally. This was a complete 180 degree difference in comparison with previous examinations. 


The children had a good teacher. He experimented with an independent teaching method he had read about online. However, because of his change in teaching style, his students started learning. They did better and better. For more information, read http://www.wired.com/business/2013/10/free-thinkers/ .

What makes students learn? Is it their teachers, is it the presence of technology, the Internet, good learning style/ method or good students who just want to learn. From the article, we understand that everyone can learn, whoever you are, wherever you may be. The internet can help you understand things better, know more about the world. But it is ultimately ourselves that determine how much we want to learn. 

The education we will receive is the education we want to receive. 



1 comment:

  1. I agree with your statement about how we only learn what we want to learn. We are the sole responsible being for our own education. How education is thought is independent of how we learn. If we are genuinely interested in learning, we would learn even if the educator or means of education is not good enough.

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