A normal day preparation started as usually, Niek came to our Hotel earlier that we learned some things before anything; again we had to learn our today’s schedule that we know what will happen in our day. We had to learn about installing and configuring Wordpress in the server, the server space that Niek gave us for one year to practice our wordpress skills, we really appreciate this opportunity that we have been given by Niek that we practice our Wordpress, thank you Niek. After all these we had to take a bus to University of Hanze, one of the Universities that provide Applied Science studies, it is a really nice University. Today is about e-learning environment, Open education, Multimedia and tools used in today’s world learning practices.
Staring with e-learning environment we have been introduced to Balackboard Learning software, here we discussed basics about e-learning software that is widely used in the world, it is a licensed and yet widely used, own licenses for this software cost a lot and it cannot be afforded by our growing college, TPSC, but this does not mean that TPSC has to seatback, relax and witness other deploying such software, there are alternatives, such alternatives includes Moodle one of the famous e-learning software. The plan is that TPSC has to start using it as soon as it can be afforded. With such software, learning will be improved, made available and advanced, facilitators can post course materials, assignments, dates of assessments and results, again students have an advantage that they can access the studying materials, assignments and schedules and attend their assignments for their courses provided they have an internet connection. There is this other software that is used to facilitate learning, particularly e-learning, this software is called Sharepoint and it works in the similar fashion as Blackboard.
Then we discussed about Open Education, with this learners have ability to get access to more materials and access to share what is offered by other University, Colleges or Learning center freely. This facility can be used or link to some free material site to be made available at TPCS IRC, one of the good is http://www.openeducation.net/, hhtp://www.slideshare.net, http://www.merlot.org/merlot/index.htm, http://wlh.webhost.utexas.edu/browse.cfm, http://www.uwtv.org/index.aspx, With such sites one can have materials he/she needs for free. With these site, not only students are in advantageous side but also teachers, they can not only get access to materials but also they can discuss to for their suitability, if possible teachers can visit these sites and give suitable links to students as not all materials in the internet are suitable for certain discipline of learning, lot of studies and literatures must be taken into consideration to deduce the perfect and suitable materials.
Then we discussed about Multimedia, these are tools that can be used to facilitate learning and making studying process easier. As broadband becomes ubiquitous, interactive designers are increasingly called upon to incorporate multiple media and dynamic graphics into their work. Presenting instruction in multiple media can be more effective than doing it through a single medium (such as text), but what is important is combining media effectively, not merely adding media. Effective multimedia for learning requires carefully combining media in well reasoned ways that take advantage of each medium’s unique characteristics. The most effective multimedia provides learning experiences that mirror real-world experiences and let learners apply the content in various contexts.
Then we discussed about software which can be used to collaborate not only for facilitators but also trainees, with these tools we can share documents and information. Such tools includes Google wave, Google docs, Google education (free learning and collaboration environment), again there are tools that can be used for communication not only one to one but one to many means of communication, and these tools could be MS live, Yahoo Messenger, Skype and Wikis. With such tools we provide more rooms for learning and trying to narrow the distance between students and teachers or sources of materials.
Based on what we learned we believe that TPSC can adopt some of these techniques if not all of them to make a learning process easier and comfortable as ever before. With these tools we give more rooms for challenges and discussion, what is really needed is change attitude and people readiness for change.
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