Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Emerging Technologies in E-Learning

The reading on emerging technologies in e-learning a good reflection on technologies that I believe I have already taken for granted. Being someone whom has always played around with technology, I have been up with the trend in using new tools and applications. I was using social networking , personal broadcasting, and online meetings without even knowing the significance of them to the new digital era. I started playing World of Warcraft, a MMORPG which started a whole new type of online gaming. (I had stopped playing after trying it for a month. This game seriously was eating my life away.) My friends all use wikis to keep everyone informed of events and borrowed items. Because I have been activity using these tools I have already gotten used to them. They have already become apart of my everyday life.

Looking forward, I think the next step is refining the technologies we have and improving them. It's like how we took the cell phone and integrated all of these social networking, information, and entertainment to them. Using all of these new tools in the classroom has and will continue to affect teaching styles. The encouragement of remote and user created content will be a major factor for the new wave of e-learning. The challenges that are ahead will help to define how the bridge the quick multi-tasking z-generation to learning theories that have been established with those that are being discovered.

1 comment:

Joshua said...

I also had to wrestle with a World of Warcraft addiction. Still, I think it was a valuable introduction to the online user environment. In a sense, you collaborated (strategized) with distant players in a potentially anonymous way. You probably learned to utilize those skills quickly since it was a game and now you just have to see how you can translate gold harvesting and building farms to instructional situations.