Classrooms of the future

Another example of what classrooms may look like in the future is Notewagon this website allows college students to miss class and buy notes online from another member in there class. The people that run the site hire students to sell their notes to other students. This allows students that are sick, have part time jobs of a family emergency to miss class time 0without missing out on important information. Although this is only taking place within college and university campuses it is still a prime example of the way the internet is changing the classrooms of the Future.

6 Tips to Successful Online Learning

How can a learner be successful in learning online? If they follow the following tips, they should be successful and enjoy their online learning experience.

1. If they do not know how to manage their time effectively already, they should develop a way to get and stay organized. Possibly purchasing an agenda and writing in due dates or programming them inside of their phone with reminder notifications.

2. Get involved in online discussions. This is your portal as an online learner to get the most out of your course. Be as active as you can possibly be and if you do not understand anything don't be afraid to ask questions.

3. Most of your online learning will take place intercatively through group discussions and online chats. If you do not feel comfortable with the material being learned or do not understand it, feel free to ask a peer. Your professor is always available to explain anything that doesn't seem crystal clear to you but your peers may also have a different method of explaining things to you, which may be helpful.

4. Stay motivated to do well in everything you do, even if you don't particularly find it interesting. Always strive to do well so that when you complete your course you will have a feeling of pride and accomplishment.

5. Communicate with your professor. If there is a particular method of delivery of the course content that works well or not so well for you, let your professor know! This is important so that the professor can help you to succeed and use your feedback in future online classrooms as well.

6. Interact with your peers. You will not be provided the opportunity to meet your peers face-to-face in a weekly classroom setting so use your online time to interact with them as best you can. You never know what networking links you may need in your future career.

 

If an online learner follows these tips, they should be successful in an online classroom. They may also visit Online Learning Tips for more tips and information on how to be successful online.

　

　
Reference for Image:
DaRos, J. (2013). Learning Theories & Technology. Retrieved from http://dryfly.ca/etec512/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=56&Itemid=71

　

More Benefits vs. Risks to Online Learning

Risks: Online learning also poses risks in students not being given the opportunity to interact with other students face-to-face. The interaction with your professor and peers all happen online and you lose out on the human interaction and bonding that would happen during your usual college experience. It doesn't provide the student the entire college experience of making new friends, going through the stresses of exams and assignments and fun times that happen while you spend your days on campus between and during classes. The online learner misses out on the bond that they would have been granted if they had attended classes rather than completing their classes over the internet.

Benefits: Successful completion of an online course can be added to your resume not only because you completed the program but also because of the qualities required for you to have been successful in it. Online learners may add "online learning" to their resume, this can be a selling feature to employers as you have proven to be tech-savvy and proven to have excellent time management skills. Online learning requires good communication skills as none of your meetings are face-to-face. This is also an excellent quality that employers look for in their employees.

There's Risks also Involved in Online Learning

The number of benefits for online learning are numerous and to some people may even seem just "too good to be true!". There's usually risks involved in any life changing decision a person makes, including deciding which school a future student will attend. For starters, online courses are more expensive than classroom courses.Why tough if you are covering the same materials as you would had you attended the class in a face-to-face setting? Possibly for the convenience it provides the students, or the fact that you don't have to pay the college for parking fees. There are also many advertisements on web pages, including on Google when you search "online classes" in the search bar. The advertisements that appear are not all recognized programs, but how is anyone shopping for online courses supposed to know that they could be falling into a trap? It is very important that each learner do their homework prior to enrolling in any program or course to ensure it is recognized and certified in their area of study. There are plenty of "bogus" courses offered online that are just money scams, the course must be recognized for you as a learner to actually receive acknowledgement from your employer, or other colleges if you are completing your course as a prerequisite to another college/university program. It is extremely important when enrolling into a course or program that provides a registration or license of some sort that the shopper contact the licensing body prior to enrollment into the course to ensure that the course is recognized and qualified as a requirement to the license that the learner is looking to obtain.

This link is enlightening to the e-learn shopper. Risks involved in online learning

Reference for Image:
Campbell, A. (2012). What's the deal with online learning.Retrieved from http://ashleacampbellwriting.blogspot.ca/2012_01_01_archive.html

Benefits to Online Learning

Online learning has many benefits, such as saving money on gas and the ability to better manage your time. Not having to attend classes each week provides the learner with more time to do other things that they enjoy or are obligated to do such as keeping their job and avoid feeling the financial strain of being a student. It can be a struggle for students who are enrolled in full time education and try to juggle employment at the same time, time becomes an issue. As a working student, it can be very difficult to delegate where your time should be spent even in your spare time, but in online classes you have the flexibility to log into your class when you find convenient. Online learning also provides the learner with the ability to take as many classes as they wish at once, allowing the learner the option to finish sooner than expected or stretch out the program over a longer period of time. It provides the learner the ability to take control and establish a sense of independent learning at their own time rate. Another benefit to online learning, which is also beneficial to class room learners is that many libraries now offer their library portals access online now as well, making research and assignments easier to do from home or wherever you can find an internet connection. If you have the strengths to be successful in an online class it may be the learning method for you. If you are organized, have excellent time management, and good communication skills you can attend your classes from just about anywhere in the world and be successful.

The following link elaborates on these key advantage points to online learning: Benefits to online learning


Reference for Image:
ADOS. (2013). Adolescence: Danger Ou Sécurité. Retrieved from http://www.ados-lab.fr/
 

Integrating Social Media and Education

Currently, social media does not have a very prominent stance in the education scene. In today's age, one would still have to rely on emails to contact their teachers if they have a question. This can be a very frustrating time for a student as it may be a question of an urgent matter and for many reasons, including school policy, many teachers do not give out their personal cell numbers to students if they have a urgent question. With new apps coming out for smartphones, this should make communication between student and teacher much more efficient and timely, for example if teachers were required to set up twitter accounts or Facebook pages, the student may simply Tweet the teacher or post on the page, which then a notification will pop up on the teachers smartphone allowing the teacher to, hopefully, respond in a very timely matter. There are also many benefits to teachers setting up YouTube accounts for a particular course. Using my course as an example, there are many skills that we are required to learn over our 2 years and currently we must rely on the teacher (if they allow us to record them in class) or other YouTube videos made by teachers in another school. The obvious down to this is that what is the method shown in one school may be different from the method shown in another school, which may leave the student more confused then when the initially searched for the video. If the school were to set up a "Nursing @ Sheridan" Youtube account, they would be able to post videos of what is currently taught at the school, allowing the student to visually witness the material over and over again rather than rely on written notes. Unfortunately, very few schools are already using the above methods to reach out to students as doing so would require policy change regarding teacher-student communication. In the future, one will hopefully be able to live in a world where teachers reply in to tweets, Facebook messages or even texts from students who wish to ask a question.

For other ways in which social media may be integrated into education in the future, look here:
http://edudemic.com/2012/07/a-teachers-guide-to-social-media/

Barriers to Inserting Technology into Tertiary Education Curriculum

 

Earlier on, it was mentioned that resources, software, and web-based  technologies are introduced to post secondary institutional curriculum to facilitate interactive dialogue, allow creativity, and improve learning. However, at a recent annual conference of the professional and organizational development network, these top challenges were identified as regards inserting technology into post secondary curriculum: 

• Faculty mistrust technology 
• Faculty need examples of effective uses of these technologies since not all are familiar with them
• Loss of control when shifting from faculty-centered to student-centered learning. The faculty may not able to divulge needed lesson to students via these new technologies
• Not a high priority for faculty development of professionals on a campus 
• Lack of a culture of openness or awareness to try technology among faculty 
• Perception that technology does not offer deep learning, thus no need for it in the school curriculum.

 Is educational technology that unforgivable? See more at this site

Classrooms of the Future

In the world of technology and social media classroom education is drastically changing. Online, or distance education classes are now offered not only in college and university education systems but also in many high school's. These classrooms are becoming more and more interactive including chats, quizzes and  group work, formatted much like an online social media page or layout. Many Schools offer a website like WEB-CT which acts like a social media site centered towards online coarse work, or a virtual classroom. An example of this that our group is well acquainted with is Sheridan college slate.

Resources to Enhance Post Secondary Curriculum

                A curriculum presents an academic plan for progression of coursework framing a student's experience in education. Post secondary curricula mandate more rigid coursework for the student, but minimum  requirements commonly include these: critical thinking; enhanced literacy; numerical comprehension; historical consciousness; scientific, ethical, and artistic pursuits; some kind of international or multicultural experience; and in-depth study in the student's chosen topic or field such as nursing.To better prepare students for the innovation economy, higher education faculty worldwide are now provided with curriculum and resources for emerging technologies such as parallel programming, visual computing, embedded applications, advanced manufacturing technology, and more. Taking the parallel programming for example, it is a program that provides professors with resources to help their students lay the foundation for successful careers in programming and software design, from development to research. Companies such as Intel equips and sponsor universities, colleges, and other post secondary institutes to update the schools' curriculum. Read  more about how Intel company does it

  

Where is Social Media Taking Education?

Social media is a very rapidly expanding market that has many uses for individuals across all walks of life. Adolescents and young adults are the most frequent users of social media and spend much of their time learning or in an educational facility. Educational institutes may use this to their advantage by using social media as a medium to deliver their material to students who are already interested in that form of communication. Learnville.com is a website that allows members to join and share various educational videos or written pieces that they have discovered or created. This will be very useful as it creates a specific website that people will flock to for information that they need. This is very different from Youtube, as with searching, for example, catheterization one may come across many videos that in fact are not educational towards the user at all but with Learnville.com the search material that is displayed will be strictly educational and relating to what the user has searched. The website also has features that are usable by teachers, as they can create quizzes, graphs, calendars and much more that will be useful for displaying information to students. Unfortunately, this website is unavailable to the general public and is only offered in a BETA version to a select few people.

How to be successful in the Online Classroom

Online classrooms are becoming more of a trend and a way of learning as the future nears. Technology if taking over our lives and world and we are becoming more reliant on it. Almost ever college and university now offers online classes for their students, such as the class we are currently taking at Sheridan College: Identity, status, power, issues in social media. There are certain characteristics and strengths that the online learner must endur, including being a self-started. The online learner must be able to organize themself and keep on top of their assignments because they don't meet in a classroom each week with their professor. Good time management is a key skill to have to be successful in any sort of learning especially learning taking place over the internet. Any online learner must have a secure and dependant internet connection (and coffee shops and libraries won't be suitable as signing in frequently to your class will be required each week). An online learner must acquire the initiative to ask questions if there is something that they do not understand in their learning. Online learning is pretty much self-teaching, it requires dedication to your course and the ability to get and stay organized in order to be successful. This is my 4th online class and I deinitely find it enjoyable because I am a self-learner, meaning I learn best by trying to figure things out by myself rather than having my professor stand in front of me and give me all of the information.

I found this link from iseek education titled "What Makes a Successful Online Learner?" to be an informative resource of what skills an online learner must posess. It breaks down the key requirements an individual must have and gives an explanation why these skills and characteristics are useful. http://www.iseek.org/education/successonline.html

Risk and benefit of online learning.

One major benefit of online learning is convenient. You can actually learn at your own time, it could be anywhere as long as you have access to a computer. The risk is you can easily forget assignments due dates, quizzes, modules to study especially when you do not keep track of these important dates. sometimes it could be frustrating  when you can't understand a module and would need an explanation right way. You have no choice other than to email the professor and wait for a response. Summary is online learning has its advantages and disadvantages.

Introduction

Who are we?

We are a group of students from Sheridan College, that have come together for a group project. This group in particular consists of four Practical Nursing students (Myself (Kevin), Shannon, Sharon and Amende) and one Child and Youth Worker student (Meggan). For individual information, please click on anyone of our names and view our profile!

What can I expect from this blog?

For this group project we will be discussing the future of education with regards to social media. Over the course of the next few weeks we will be making our postings once or twice a week and they will cover the following:

- context of past and present

- post secondary education curriculum, globalization
- Risks and benefits of online learning
- classroom of the future
- online classrooms
- issues/obstacles/challenges
- links to research/resources

How long will you be posting on this blog?

Unfortunately, with this being a group project, we will not be doing this blog for an extended period of time. The scheduled last post for this blog is on March 21st with the first scheduled post being on February 26th, feel free to comment on any one of our postings prior to March 21st if you wish for an immediate response.