transformation of Education

Transformation of Education

Learning online is similar in many ways to learning traditionally. Using technological tools, students must still apply critical and creative thinking skills, communicate with others, and apply what they have learned. The online classroom environment is structured differently and operates differently than a brick-and-mortar school, though, and learning online does require some basic mastery of computer software and hardware. However, the Internet is an intuitively designed medium and even students who are relatively unfamiliar with the Web will be able to learn online without any special skills.

In fact, online learning levels the playing field with regards to students from different backgrounds of with different physical or mental capabilities. Students whose primary language is not English will be able to avail themselves of translation software that will facilitate the reading process when perusing online documents. Moreover, learning on their own time, students can spend as much or as little time on specific subject areas. In a classroom, the differences between students are accentuated as students cannot learn in their own time frame.

Learning online requires familiarity with hypertext documents and with the variety of Internet research sources and search engines. Furthermore, online learners must be able to distinguish between credible and unreliable sources of information when conducting research. Therefore, the most important ability students and educators need to cultivate for online learning situations is discrimination.