November 28th, 2008 by Robin Green

According to BBC contributor Bill Thompson, teachers are experiencing great success with the incorporation of virtual worlds into their classroom learning systems.

And why wouldn’t they? Research firm eMarketer estimates that 24 percent of the 34.3 million users ages three to 18 used virtual worlds at least monthly in 2007, a figure that will jump to 53 percent by 2011. As young people become more involved in virtual worlds, their understanding of virtual world interactions and their roles within the virtual world are becoming more sophisticated, and therefore more easily translated into an academic learning system.

How would you employ a virtual world in your blended learning system?

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November 28th, 2008 by Robin Green

I’ve said that adults and young people alike may be engaged by courseware systems that apply gaming concepts in their interactive and narrative designs. But what about teachers who want to go beyond websites, courseware systems, whiteboards and discussion forums in their classroom blended learning environments?

BBC contributor Bill Thompson recently attended ReLIVE08, a conference on the education and research uses of virtual “worlds”. At the conference, he learned about the creative ways in which virtual environments are being used in areas as diverse as language teaching and urban planning.

Sarah Robins-Bell, co-author of Second Life for Dummies, gave a paper in which she looked at 75 different virtual worlds and created a classification scheme that may helps courseware system teachers understand similarities and differences between diverse worlds like Everquest, Club Penguin, Second Life and World of Warcraft.

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Coggno.com provides high-quality LMS platforms.

October 2nd, 2008 by Robin Green

Network hardware and internet companies strive to be trendsetters, not followers, in the industry. This requires not only thinking outside the box, but keeping in mind our societal need for technology as a collaborative tool. The possibilities are endless.

Companies react accordingly, developing cutting-edge technology that provides new ways of interacting online. Cisco, for example, is working on unified communications that combine a virtual meeting space via TV, web conferencing and instant messaging. The idea of collaboration is integral to tools like the learning management system as well.

In designing your learning management system, keep in mind its community-building capacity. The more interactive and collaborative, the more effective your learning management system will be. Synergy is the bread and butter of today’s globalizing economy.

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Coggno.com provides premier e-learning courses.

September 1st, 2008 by Robin Green

While it is argued that spending considerable time on the internet, even when deliberately using it as a learning system, may turn people antisocial and hermitlike, the counterargument posits that interacting with others online actually increases people’s capacity for social interaction. As well, that it also tends to grant them a democratically oriented outlook on life, as online learning community and forum debates are often settled this way. This learning system is said to encourage creativity and a healthy reluctance to take all assertions as truths.

While it probably won’t be able to efficiently replace the value of in-person learning for some time, the internet learning system certainly offers an increasing amount of advantages, to the point of oft surpassing the usefulness of the traditional system.

September 1st, 2008 by Robin Green

One of the minuses of the traditional academic (and others) learning system is the passivity of the students—educators educate actively, while learners learn passively, solely by receiving and processing information. Interactivity is foreign to, dare I say, most learners in the world. As children, we often learn with toys, but as we become older and attend classes, we become receptacles of information, often having to memorize data without ever being asked to analyze it.

Via the interactive learning system known as the internet, students can search for, check, compare, and share information. Many interactive web sites, with quizzes, videos, live chat, and the like accustom students to abandon the passive role and adopt an opinionated, analytic, active role, which consequently engages the learner further in the learning system, and results in better learning overall.