Friday, March 5, 2010
Online Education
I have been researching the use of online education in classrooms recently. Through my research I have found it to be quite beneficial for students and teachers. It gives students the chance to share their voice to people all around the world. I have also found, that the U.S. Department of Education is making it a goal to have every school and its students using online education. It will become mandatory for students to graduate. My question for you is, how do you suppose the U.S. Department of Education plans to provide all of the schools in the country with the resources for this plan to use online education in the classroom? Do you think this goal is a practical one or too ambitious to be handed out?
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If we speak about the goal to simply provide resources for integrating online education into the classroom, that goal can easily be met. Hand out a couple computers to those school districts who do not have them, or provide grant money for purchasing, and voila! However, it's the successful implementation of integrating online education into our “brick and mortar” classrooms that will be a struggle. Because the issue is many educators do not properly understand what to do with these resources. While I feel the goal can be achieved, I think the biggest hurtle is educating our educators on how to successfully and seamlessly use technology inside of our classrooms.
ReplyDeleteI thought this link http://www.state.nj.us/education/techno/localtech/checklist.htm was interesting. It’s a three-year local district technology plan checklist for the state of NJ for July 2010 through 2013. Give’s you insight on how a state in our area is attempting to gather information on educational technology plans in its schools. Now, keep in mind when looking at this, that this is checklist is only for schools that have received funding from the E-Rate program. The E-Rate program offers discounts on telecommunication services (i.e. phone line, internet connections, email, routers, modems, network servers etc.).
Then here http://www.state.nj.us/education/techno/state_plan.htm , you can see NJ’s educational technology plan. It’s interesting to see their plan, however the thing to note is the fact that, assuming I’m not mistaken, it appears the technology plan has not been revised since 2003. It’s 2010!
I believe anything is possible and if our society will start to focus on the more important things in life such as education our future will be able to change positively.
ReplyDeleteA little ambitious, where's all the money coming from? sounds great, but I think they better have a reasonable time frame, and plan before just slapping everyone with a new set of standards.
ReplyDeleteI think that U.S. schools should push for laptop computers for every students as a cost efficient investment for the future. It costs millions of dollars for paper textbooks and paper and pencil supplies every few years. It would be better if schools went as paper free as possible and invested in going paperless, in the long run it would be more cost effective.
ReplyDeleteI would have to speculate that the future of online learning is in the hands of the teachers in providing a meaningful learning experience for their students. It is up to schools districts as well as colleges to educate the teachers and future teachers of its implications and importance. Like I have said before, I do not think it is going away anytime soon. I think this is an ambitious goal, and that it will take years before online education for the masses happens as instinctively as the traditional methods of teaching used today do.
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