Online Learning

Today's student is: tech savvy and most like to learn at their own pace.  A great option for these students in online courses.  I was one of the few students in my class to experience a web-based course.  Although I believe it is a good option for students, it was not a good option for me.  I am the kind of student who needs to be in a classroom, surrounded by my classmates, with a teacher leading the lessons.  Learning at your own pace is great, but thats if you are able to make sense of the information you are learning.  This was my issue, I struggled with the material I was learning.  Let's keep in mind this was more than a few years ago.

This week Donald Girouard and Shannon Horne, from Manitoba Education, came to talk to our class about online education.  They talked about the advantages of online education:

• Those living in remote or small communities who want to take a course that is not otherwise offered to them. (This was me)
• Single parents who need to be home with their kids.
• Students who are not able to be on campus.

Online education allows these individuals to continue on with their education.  This also allows them to work at their own pace.

It was great to learn how schools in rural areas are using these tools to bring more classes to their students.  In some small town schools, they have a blended system.  This means that sometimes the teacher will be directing the lesson via teleconference, lab work (where all the schools meet at one for a whole afternoon of instruction/lab experiments),  printed packages, online tools such as Blackboard, and synchronous lessons.

As a teacher about to graduate, it is great to know that the province is doing what they can to make sure that everyone has access to education.