I never knew that there was a 3D classroom. I knew about chat rooms and websites that you could create to have your own little world but a classroom? I guess it is the wave of the future. I was looking at the sites for Active Worlds, Second Life, and www.oddessey.com and I liked learning about them. If you log into any of these sites you can create your own world, play games, visit other worlds, and chat with other users. The Active Worlds site even has a mall that you can shop and get virtual arrangements, or accessories for your world. Registration is free which, is a good thing. There is one difference that I found among the sites. The Active Worlds site seems to be more toward the classroom and teaching students where Oddessey and Second Life seem to be more for the individual, one who just wants to create their own world for friends to visit. I have actually thought about joining the Active Worlds realm so I can check out the bowling world.

I have a big tool box. I am one of those people who love school supplies and can be very creative. In the education world there are lots and lots of tools. Some of these tools can be electric, or they can just be regular things, like a white board.

Like I have said previously, I work at the Sylvan Learning Center in Richmond and there we have lots of tools. We mainly have manipulatives though. Sylvan is like a very tiny classroom. We only teach three students at a time, but we have access to all kinds of manipulatives. We have a white board for teachers to show students examples of problems and we have fraction cubes, clocks, colored counters, and many more items that the students can use in order to get a better understanding of a concept.

In the actual classroom though, we could have many more things. Reference books, blackboards, televisions, computers, coloring items, and projectors are just a few of the tools that can be used in the classroom. Teachers can use almost anything as a tool for education. I take that back they can use anything as a tool they just have to know how to use it themselves and what they are going to use it for.

To answer some of the questions for Nate’s post “Personal Learning Environments” I think that the teacher’s tool box and the student’s tool box could be the same. We would just use the tools in different ways. For example, if the teacher was teaching geometry and they were working on a unit that required the use of a compass, the teacher would teach the student how to use the tool and then allow them to use that tool to work on the problems. However, I am assuming that there are differences in the two toolboxes because the questions ask what you can learn from the others toolbox; however I am not sure what the differences would be.  But no matter what tool we use, as long as we are using it for the purpose of learning we are creating more learners.

I’ve read and thought about the article about in-person education and I agree that online education isn’t for everyone but at some point in their educational career. This world is moving into technology quickly and everyone should have some experience with it.

In the article, Jane Arnold mentioned that she likes working with people and that when she can’t work with people anymore than she will not teach. However, in all education you are working with people. It may not be face to face but we are still working with people through an online connection. Sometimes it is a little difficult connecting with those people but we still manage to make it work.

She also listed a few reasons as to why online learning would not work for some people and claims that in the future there may not even be onsite classes. However, her reasons for why the online learning will not work are the very same reasons as to why we will always have onsite courses. I think the reasons that she gives are good reasons but there are ways to change them or enhance them. One reason she gave was that it is uni-sensory. Online courses are mainly a visual thing but we can add more to our sites to make them oral. We can add videos to blogs and webpages. Turn up the volume and listen to lectures or experiments/examples. If we want more interaction, reenact the experiment/examples. Not having a computer/internet or not knowing how to type may hinder the experience of online learning but it should not stop the student completely. There are ways to get the internet or access to a computer. This is one of the main reasons that we will have onsite courses. We have classrooms which have internet capabilities and allow students to have access 24/7. In some high schools, we issue laptops to students like we do textbooks. As for not knowing how to type, we can all learn to do that. I’m not the best typer but I get by. I have never taken a typing class nor had someone teach me what I should do. I just hunted and pecked for so long that I know where the keys are and have a system that works for me. I will admit that reading hyperlinks is sometimes hard for me to. That is why, I try to print the screen that I am looking at, if I can. This way I have reference to it and can highlight and not have to keep scrolling up and down on the screen for information that I have previously read.

So online education is a thing of the future we just have to determine how it will work best for the things that we want and/or need.

I’m a little behind in my writing but I have been doing some thinking, which is quite shocking. But since I have a long drive everyday and no radio I have a lot of time to think.

So, I was thinking about the 16 questions and final paper for an online course and I decided that I like this course a lot more. I used to love courses where I knew exactly what was expected and could finish whenever I wanted to and didn’t learn a thing from them. This course is more involved and I learn something new everyday. Sometimes, I feel like I am not one of the smartest people because a lot of the things we talk about are new to me. I may have heard about the topics in other courses but like I said, I had those online courses that are answer questions and write a final paper and I didn’t retain any of that information.

I am also taking two other online courses this semester. Both of them are math courses and I have only had three or four assignments in both courses. I love math but I am not liking these courses. Yes, they are slack but I’m to the point in my education that I actually want to learn and remember the information and not learn it for now and forget about it. The other thing I don’t really like about the course is that the teachers are horrible at responding if you have questions. We are supposed to communicate with groups and with teachers if we have problems but the people in the course do not participate or answer questions in a timely manner. You may not hear this much but I am one of those people who likes to hear when they are wrong so I can go back and fix it or change it. I learn more from my mistakes then from learning it the first time. I like to make things better. I tutor math and I love it when students see me get a problem wrong, because 80 percent of the time they know exactly what I have done wrong. This leads me to another reason why I like this course. Because we are graded every week I have the opportunity to make up for mistakes or lack of writing and thinking, where in other courses you can’t do that. If it is wrong it’s wrong and that’s that.

I’m not saying that the 16 questions and final paper are bad assignments; I’m just saying that there needs to be more that goes along with them.

So far I have learned quite a bit in this course. I never knew that keeping a blog could be fun and make you think at the same time. It is a little hard at times to keep up with the blog and reading the same things over on everyones blogs. Sometimes it is hard to come up with something different. But the stories from OLDaily and Remote Access are very interesting. If conversations could be developed from the blogs that the class writes then the class might be even more fun. The only problem I have with the course is that whenever I want to post to my blog the internet seems to be down. Even with that I am still looking forward to learning more about the facts and myths about education.

I finally took the tips and tricks tour at TappedIn. I rather enjoyed it. The site is easy to use and easy to learn about. I like how the offices and groups can be set up the way that you want them to and that either everyone can have access or they can be set to private. TappedIn is a good tool for students to use for research. They can find a group on almost any subject. The teachers also have a say in where the student can go as well. If the teacher wants a student to be able to access a certain passageway then they need to collaborate with the owner of the passageway to allow access. I also like the chat feature. I learned how to make the font bigger, how to use emote actions, and how to detach the chat from TappedIn. I also joined my first group and edited my profile. When I have any free time I might add a few things to my office and join some more groups.

After reading this chapter, I thought why couldn’t anyone tell me this sooner. For my graduate assistanceship, one of the professor wanted me to help her create a distribution list for an email that she had to send out but I had no clue what that was. After reading the section about email I realized that I knew what it was, I just didn’t know what it was called. I also liked learning about the MUDs and the MOOs. My two favorite things from the chapter are the Desktop Videos and the file tranfers. I have always wanted to use a desktop video. I think that it would be very interesting to see and talk to someone from acroos the country or on the other side of the world. I like the file tranfers because I find them quite convenient, especially when talking through an instant messenger. You can send letters, documents, and even pictures.

Well, some new stuff has been added to the mix now, but I seem to be coping well. My internet is not working in my apartment so my plan as of this week, until I get my own internet connection, is to read the posts at work, since my morning job is “slow”, and take notes so that I can write my ideas in Word and save them so I can publish them in my blog the next day at work, then repeat the process.  

I am also helping out with the bowling team here at Morehead but it seems that we may not have a girls team this year. If that happens then this will be the first time that has happened in the history of Morehead bowling, especially since the women tend to bring in more money then the guys .

Education is everywhere. You just have to pay attention to it. One can learn anything that they put their minds to. After reading the passages on distance education, I realized that it might be better for some students to get their high school diploma through an online education system. But it depends on the type of student. Some students may have a troubled home life and need to stay home and help take care of parents while others need to go to school because both parents work and there is no one home to take care of them. Then there are some students who do have jobs and they spend their time working and going to school that they have no time to reflect on what they have learned at school, so I think that online education would be better for them. I think that it would be a good idea to have high school students take at least one online class or a class that prepares them for online education at the college level.

Since it seems that our world will be turning into a land of technology and all jobs will then become technology based, I think that distance education will create a path to the future. Students will be able to learn from anywhere, anytime. If there is a problem in Texas and the person that can fix the problem is on a business trip in Alaska then there is that technology that we can send messages, pictures, and even talk through the computer when the telephone is not an option.

On a final note though, I believe that anyone can get an education anywhere. Education is not just what a student learns in the school or online. It is also what they learn outside of it. Spending time with friends, exploring the world, having a job, and talking with elder relatives, these are all great learning experiences that will help us in the future, and to grow in our knowledge.

I think that there are a lot of advantages to Distance Education. Students will learn new ways to learn a new skill and a way to communicate what they have learned. Having students use the computer, calculator, hand-helds, ipods, and even cell phones now are good ways to get them to understand how to use different programs to learn skills that they may need in their future. Most likely students are comfortable with these types of technology and wouldn’t mind using them in education matters. I think that having online courses is also an advantage, especially for those who are raising a family and work all at the same time. They can get an education and still manage their lives. If a course is all online then it depends on the class as to whether there are disadvantages to it. But I think that also depends on how the class is taught as to how many disadvantages there are. For instance, I think that some science and math courses could be taught online but once we get in to some of the upper levels then it wouldn’t be such a good idea to use anything online, unless it is a video or something that may give a guide to what is being done by the students. A lot of the science courses need to be hands on with an instructor present, especially if that person is training to be a doctor or nurse. I wouldn’t want someone to operate on me that hasn’t had the experience and learned everything online.

I teach math at the Sylvan Learning Center in Richmond and I don’t think that distance education would fit in to that atmosphere. But there are some centers that do have tutoring programs online. If I were in the classroom then I would definitely use some form of distance education, whether it be a blog about what they learned in math, software that they can use for discovery methods, or manipulatives that will help them understand.