DeAnza College/CIS2/Fall 2009/Group 3

Online Education
Online education is a powerful and convenient method of education, especially in the 21st century. Today, computers, internet, and technology are used extensively everywhere. Learning skills in technology is critical to workers in the 21st century business community. Many jobs requires computer skilled employees. Distance learning is also one of the most convenient ways for many learners and students who are unable or incapable of physically attending classes. However, there are some issues involved in distance learning, but the benefits seem to outweigh the negative effects. There are numerous benefits for students taking online courses. Overall, these skills are useful for everyone in seek of a better education and higher skills to utilize in the future.

Advantages
 * Distance learning is a convenient way to learn, especially for mothers with children in need of constant care. Anytime, anywhere access can be very helpful for learners with other priorities including workers whose job schedule conflicts with class hours. Other students feel that they are allowed to attend courses online when they are fully awake and focused, rather than being tired and bored in the classroom which can cause a lack of perception.


 * Students can learn in the method they find best, whether they are highly visual, aural, read/write, kinesthetic, or multimodal learners.


 * Online education allows for the ability to access courses 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to read, review and better understand discussions, lectures, comments, and explanations without missing a class period or being distracted in class. It also allows them to take their time to think about what they want to say, reply, or comment. Some students who are taking online courses feel much less intimidated. Anonymity gives everyone a chance to contribute and helps students express their opinion without being judged for being biased because of gender, race, or age.


 * Distance learning is convenient for the physically disabled people and people with other dysfunctions.


 * Students' interactions such as group discussions, chatrooms, group projects, and formal and informal conversations between students and teachers can increase bonding and camaraderie as well as the diversity of opinions and facilitate skills for team learning.


 * Online education leads to enhanced contact between students and instructors. Instructors are more approachable since students can contact them openly using email, discussions and/or chatting without waiting for office hours.


 * Using the internet to research information online teaches students skills in technology which are valuable in this century.


 * There is less time and cost spent on traveling to campus.


 * Online instructors can contribute with practical knowledge and skills from anywhere across the globe, which exposes the student to knowledge that cannot be learned in books.


 * Online education increases the diversity of course material which may not be available locally, and is especially beneficial for students who live in remote rural areas that cannot support college or vocational training centers.


 * Online education allows widespread access to free educational tools such as podcasts, images, graphs, diagrams, tables, games, links, discussion pages, files, software, multilingual online dictionaries, and so much more.

Disadvantages


 * There is an isolation and lack of physical interaction with classmates, peers, and instructors.


 * Self-motivation and discipline is required in order for the student to progress in a timely manner.


 * There is a possibility of limited opportunities to use local networks, computers, high speed internet, software programs, etc.


 * Lack of physical activities can cause obesity and wearing out your body through mental exertion can cause fatigue.


 * There may be timezone differences, depending on the areas where students and instructors live.

What is WikiEducator.org?
WikiEducator is global community project founded by Wayne Mackintosh[], striving towards providing a free version of an online education curriculum and free content. It is built for academic people, educators, and students to contribute openly by providing mass collaboration through adapting, reusing and sharing educational material to establish free and open teaching materials and online distance learning. This will benefit so many people worldwide as well as be very useful for higher education. It will also allow contributors to freely share their knowledge without speech restrictions. This project can lead to so much success and growth with advanced technology and technological skills. Technological success and education will bring about a better future for all.



What is OER?
OER stands for open educational resources, which are freely available for use, reuse, adaptation, and sharing. OERs are perfect for online teaching, and are often used at WikiEducator. OERs solve the problem of copyright and fair use. You can find out more about OERs at the OER Foundation or in the OER Handbook.

What is "free content"?
Free content involves sharing knowledge with personal liberty which protects your work against commerical exploitation.

What are Projects and Initiatives?
Each page on WikiEducator is its own project. Projects can range from small courses and content pages to large government or NPO led initiatives. Projects are often a work in progress, and it's easy to help out one that you like; it's also easy to start your own!

WikiEducator.org Projects
These are just a sampling of the projects that WikiEducator is part of. Many of these examples here are initiatives.

Teacher Collaboration
The Teacher Collaboration Portal is an initiative especially designed for teachers who want to develop content and share ideas with one another. It also acts as a starting point for teachers looking to learn how to teach online classes. The portal offers free online learning workshops with such topics as wiki usage, OERs, and integrating technology, and these workshops are still ongoing, so sign up now.

Open Schools
Open Schools is an initiative in progress that teaches educators to use wikis to bring down the cost of education in order to achieve universal access to school-level education. This initiativen also runs workshops that teach financing, budgeting and costs associated with running an open school.



English for Speakers of Other Languages
This project, ESOL, is a collaborative project aimed at develop online workshops that teach a critical skill in today's world, that of speaking English. Their next workshop is coming up in March, 2010. The workshops will teach all skill levels, all ages, and will teach grammar, spelling, vocabulary, reading and writing, and speaking and pronunciation.

Learning 4 Content
The Learning 4 Content project is designed for WikiEducator educators worldwide to train wiki skills at not cost. Learners are to donate through sharing knowledge or developing educational resources in return.

How To Help
If you see a project that you like in the example list, or have thought of something that you'd like to see in the list, then feel free to help. Everything you need to know to get started helping can be found on the Help Page. This page contains tutorials, FAQs, links to forums, a list of policies on helping, and more. The first step is to register an account. Another good place to start is the page on Using WikiEducator.

For contributions and collaborations, here are the instructions for online workshop to the learning 4 content project. Learning4Content

Strategy
We made the assumption that the audience is a person new to WikiEducator and interested enough in it to click some Help/About link. Because they are already here and may be willing to help out, we show them the merits of existing projects, and immediately provide more links they can follow to help out. Many visitors will be teachers, so the first example project shown is teacher oriented.

Additional Resources
Here are some other quality pages you may be interested in: PYTHON TUTORIALS The Anatomy and Physiology of Animals Quality Assurance Framework Pilot Projects Parenting Open Educational Content Teacher Mentoring

Find many more initiatives here: Initiatives

Links
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_of_Learning Commonwealth of learning

http://www.oercommons.org/ Open Educational Resources

http://www.olcos.org/ Open eLearning Content Observatory Service

http://opened.creativecommons.org/What_is_Open_Education%3F What is Open Education

http://teachingandlearningissues.ucalgaryblogs.ca/2009/03/11/links-from-george-siemens-presentation/comment-page-1/ George Siemens presentation

http://www.worldwidelearn.com/business-course/nonprofit-fundraising-course.htm Non-profit organization

http://wikieducator.org/Learning4Content Learning4content hub

Media link

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5961719786180845836&ei=qCsTS_CGCo-SqAOR6LzhAw&q=e+learning&hl=en#

Articles
By Stephen Downes http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/17860 October 12th, 2009

George Siemens http://www.connectivism.ca/?p=151 Thursday, August 13th, 2009 at 7:26 pm