Week 1 POST #2 - Learning 2.0

E-LEARNING

Education is not the filling of the pail, but the lighting of a fire- W.B. Yeats

What is e-learning and how is it benefiting K-12 schools? E-Learning lessons are generally designed to guide students through information or to help students perform in specific tasks. Information based e-Learning content communicates information to the student. Examples include content that distributes the history or facts related to a service, company, or product. In information-based content, there is no specific skill to be learned. In performance-based content, the lessons build off of a procedural skill in which the student is expected to increase proficiency. (Wikipedia, 2009)

E-learning is not something new, but something that has been around for the past ten years. (Phillips, n.d.) So why haven’t more schools picked up on the idea of e-learning? Distance learning used to be putting students in a room, setting up a projector, and talking to another class. Today e-learning offers so much more. Blogging is currently “the thing” to do with students. There are many opportunies for teachers to use blogging with their students in the classroom. One such site includes classpress.com, or educationworld.com. Teachers are starting to explore the potential of blogs, media-sharing services and other social software - which, although not designed specifically for e-learning, can be used to empower students and create exciting new learning opportunities. (O’Hare, 2006)

Using my Wii Fit Project™, I am currently looking for new and innovative ways to reach my students. I’m looking to set up a e-learning environment within my classroom by using Wii’s Animal Crossing and creating high tech pen pals. Using Animal Crossing, my students will not only become more familiar with the concept of economics and the process of moving into a new community, looking for a house, getting a loan, finding a job, but also, using the microphone attachment with the Animal Crossing game, be able to set up high tech pen pals where we can engage in strategies and converse on students’ daily lives in different parts of the country. E-learning is not a new idea, but new ideas need to be used in the classroom to continue to reach our today’s learners.

“Do not train children to learning by force and harshness, but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.” – Plato

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Learning

EdTech. (2007). The future is here! Emerging technologies in the classroom. Retrieved September 11, 2009, from, http://www.tcubed.wordpress.com/2007/10/24/the-future-is-here-emerging-technologies-in-the-classroom/