Education for a Digital World Advice, Guidelines and Effective Practice from Around Globe, 2008a

1 – Emerging Technologies in E-learning
learning tools. Users will be challenged to find ways to
use them so that they facilitate learning. For more information
on learning management systems, see Chapter
7, Learning Management Systems.
Eventually, we will be able to find almost anything
online. Ten years ago, a colleague said that everything
current and worthwhile was already online. This is more
true now with Project Gutenberg and Google Books
putting libraries of books online, universities making
their course materials available (e.g., MIT’s Open
CourseWare), communities creating knowledge repositories
with wikis, and blogs making almost everyone’s
opinions available whether we want them or not.
The challenge will be for learners (all of us) to manage
information overload. Much of this will happen
beyond the scope of any locally installed learning management
system. Google and other search engines will
evolve to provide tools for people to manage it all.
Content will be organized as reusable learning objects,
much as they are in learning content management
systems but on a much broader scale. Wikis and folksonomies
may help solve this. Simply put, a folksonomy is
a collaborative method of categorizing online information
so that it can be easily searched and retrieved. More
commonly, it is called tagging. This term is often used in
websites where people share content in an open community
setting. The categories are created by the people
who use the site. To see how tagging operates, go to sites
such as Flickr or Del.icio.us. Learning object repositories
such as ARIADNE and learning object referratories
such as MERLOT facilitate the exchange of peerreviewed
learning materials in a more structured way.
Personalization and context-aware devices such as
GPS (global positioning system) units will also help.
Personalization is the ability of a website to adapt to its
users, like Amazon.com does when it suggests other
books you may like, or for the user to adapt the website
for his or her own purposes like Google does when it
allows you to customize what you see on its website. RSS
feeds are a way of personalizing information you receive
from the Internet. GPS units can locate the user so that
information can be customized for that location. For
example, a user who lives in Chicago but is visiting New
York would receive weather information for New York.
WEBSITES MENTIONED IN THIS SECTION
• Wifi Cafés: http://wifi.earthcode.com
• Current TV: http://www.current.tv
• Discovery School: http://school.discovery.com
• Exploratorium: http://exploratorium.com
• ClearTXT: http://www.cleartxt.com/index.html
• Project Gutenberg:
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page
• Google Books: http://books.google.com
• MIT’s Open CourseWare:
http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html
• Flickr: http://www.flickr.com
• Del.icio.us: http://del.icio.us
• ARIADNE: http://www.ariadne-eu.org
• MERLOT: http://www.merlot.org
Challenges
There are, however, some barriers to the adoption of
these emerging technologies. While learners may embrace
them, it may take longer for institutions and corporations
to adopt and implement them. Administrative
policies as well as an organization’s culture can slow
down or halt their adoption. Some policy makers may
misunderstand the usefulness of these technologies in
teaching and learning. As learners adopt new technologies,
they will take more control over their own learning,
which may challenge the status quo. This may gradually
influence corporations and institutions to accept this
new paradigm of learning. The consequences of not
serving the needs of learners to keep up-to-date with
these new ways of learning challenge the relevance of
formal training and learning in our organizations.
Perceptions about the quality of certain technologymediated
instructional activities or environments provide
additional challenges. As a prime example, the USbased
College Board questions “whether Internet-based
laboratories are an acceptable substitute for the handson
culturing of gels and peering through microscopes
that have long been essential ingredients of American laboratory
science” (Dillon, 2006, para. 3). While emerging
technologies allow us to extend nearly unlimited possibilities
to those who previously did not have access to
them, there may always be a group of people who feel
online instruction cannot replace direct experience. Who
would not want to see lions and zebras in their natural
habitat in Africa instead of going to a zoo or watching a
video clip online? Similarly, if it were possible to set up
expensive chemistry labs in every school or college, then
the virtual environments would not be necessary. They
would only serve as a way to refresh knowledge, rather
than to obtain it. An alternate solution may be to allow
students to learn virtually, but to require them to demonstrate
proficiencies in person as appropriate (e.g., before
moving to a certain level of difficulty).
Intellectual property (IP) rights and digital rights
management will be major challenges. Short-sighted,
16 Education for a Digital World