Online Learning and Virtual Reality

Well, in Chapter 5, it discusses using television as a medium for learning, but in the assignment you asked for discussion of online learning, so I'm not quite sure what you wanted. I'll stick to what you asked for in the assignment and forget the chapter in the book. I agree that the computer is a boon to the public school setting, which is in agreement with my educational technology philosophy. I don't think it is so much teachers being stubborn or being afraid as it is them being undertrained and being expected to figure the software, etc. out on their own. At least, this has been my experience. I believe that using computers as virtual schools is going a little far, though. I don't believe you can completely do away with the teacher; you need an actual person there to make sure the students stay grounded, answer questions and generally teach the crux of the lesson. You've got to take into account your slow readers or your students who work below grade level as well. Having the computer read it to them is doing them no good because their reading level will never go up if they don't practice reading themselves.

As far as the Second Life thing goes, I don't have much of an opinion of it. I cannot see myself doing it. It seems to me to be unnecessary, really. Something else to have to master in a sea of things to have to master. I don't believe that it is something adults need to have to use to have meetings and to confer with each other. In fact, I see adults using it as kind of ridiculous except to play with it. However, I can see kids seeing it as really cool and I can see it being a really great teaching tool, but I can see it being a difficult to use as a teaching tool in that you have to take so much time to build the sets and get it ready for use in teaching a lesson and I know that a normal school district is not going to put out the $ to hire a company to build for the teachers who use it! They'd be expected to do it themselves! So, I guess I'm not as into virtual reality as some of the other people in the class are. I have a hard enough time with real reality!!!