E-Learning
In this post I will be talking about online education and will be investigating some of the services it offers people. Online education helps both schools and students. It helps students massively as if they are attempting something at home they can easily access help to do the question online if they are struggling. It also helps schools as the websites that provide an online education service give schools more and cheaper resources to teach their students.
Exploring Learning Objects and Simulations
I will now explore what learning objects and simulations are provided for online education. The website I will explore to find this out is http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/. This is a website that is especially designed to help A-level and vocational students.
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| Screenshot from the Science Museum website |
This website shows how computers and the internet have evolved since it was invented in the 1950s. The website shows how the computer has evolved from being a rare luxury good into a common household item. The purpose of this website is to inform people about what the internet is used for and how it has developed. The website completes this purpose well as the timeline they give explains this information well.
Using a Simulation
Now I am going to explore a website which provides an online simulation. The website is http://frog.edschool.virginia.edu/Frog2. This website is especially designed to provide the student with an opportunity which they normally would not get.
This website gives the student a step by step guide of how to dissect a frog. This student is primarily for biology students who may need to know how to dissect a frog for their coursework or exams. The website goes through the method of properly dissecting a frog through showing the students videos and pictures of what they are doing and how to correcting dissect the frog. I believe this websites purpose is to show people how to correctly dissect a frog so they can find out the maximum amount of information they can so they are able to be successful in their exams. I think the website definitely fulfils this purpose as from going through the simulation I understood what they were doing and the instructions and information the website gave me were really easy to understand.
Virtual Classroom
In this part of the blog I will discuss what virtual classrooms do. To do this I will explore the website, http://www.tutorialized.com/tutorials/Flash/1. This website is called Macromedia Flash tutorials and has virtual classrooms on it.
The purpose of this website is to help students learn or understand what they to help pass their exams. The website has different categories on it differentiating the different subjects and virtual classrooms so it is easy for the students to find what they are looking for. Each folder contains links to other websites which show tutorials to what the student was trying to find out. These tutorials that Macromedia leads to are very easy to understand and are useful. I believe this website fulfils its purpose well as the tutorials are easy to understand and help you to learn hoe to do specific things to do with education.
Using a Learning Object
Now I will explore using an online learning. The website I will explore is http://www.lynda.com/. This website is used to help people to learn software skills, creative skills and business skills.
This website uses different tutorial videos to show people how to use something or to understand something. This website is very easy to use as it uses simple drop down menus to direct people to where they want to go. There is also a search bar at the top and bottom of the web page so people cane easily find what they need to. The turorials onthe website are easy to understand and very clear. This is good because it makes it easy for people to understand what is happening or what they need to do.
These types of links and short videos are used widely around the e-learning businesses as these videos are extremely easy to understand.
Researching Online Education
Above are four different types of online education that I have analysed. Now I will rank them in order of what one I think is the best learning tool. The website I think is the best for learning from is Macromedia Flash tutorials. I believe this is the best website because it has a wide variety of subjects to choose from, so it can help anybody whos needs to learn. This website also has extremely clear videos that are easy to understand.
The second best website is lynda.com. The reason for this is that the tutorials on this website are very clear and easy to understand, however the website only has three subjects you can learn, software skills, business skills and creative skills. For people who want to learn the skills the website is very useful, but for other people it is useless.
The third website is science museam. This website has a lot of information on it and is extremely good for people who are learning a history based subject. The information is written in a simple form, but there is a lot of writing on it. Also the website only focuses on one subject so if students do not do history they will find this website useless, as the information on it is not relevant.
The website I believe to be the worst out of these four is Net Frog. This website is a simulation of how to dissect a frog. This website has clear instructions of how to dissect a frog and also has videos to show people how to do it. This website only focuses on dissecting a frog and nothing else.
