Another way of learning

Blogger's Note: Another way of learning. Hopefully, Microsoft could sustain it. Better yet, Microsoft should sell MS Office with Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Access (let's call it Essentials) around PhP 5,000. Mabilis pa sa alas-dos ubos yan.

Paradigm Shift in Learning
Posted 06:42am (Mla time) Feb 18, 2005 By Wilson Chua, INQ7.net

MY eldest daughter Aleia had a school project. She asked me to suggest a suitable topic. Because I had just come from a meeting with Mr Sam Jacoba of Microsoft and Fr. Jomar Legaspi of Learn.ph, where we discussed online education, I immediately suggested she do a piece on online learning.The Microsoft PIL (Partners in Learning) project aims to teach trainers to develop online courses. It will also enlist the help of DepEd's video studios to record the session. From there, the video recordings will be digitized and synchronized with power point presentations of the lessons. A Microsoft program called 'Producer' will be used to do this.Once the digitized format is ready, PIL plans to host it on a Microsoft Class Server Learning Management System. This Class Server system will allow administrators to create, modify, and edit student, teacher, and class records and assign students and teachers to 'online classes'.The digitized lessons will be made available online.

When this system is fully deployed, PIL envisions the day when students from any walk of life can log in via any of the hundreds of broadband-enabled cybercafés and access the lessons. Using multimedia technology, the teachers can deliver a video stream with the same consistent quality time and time again. Students can take comprehension tests online and the teachers can have these automatically graded by the system.Sharp as she is, Aleia quickly wondered how the system could handle the loss of interactivity between students and teachers and in the virtual class in general. She also had apprehensions about how to prevent cheating in exams. These two questions are the most common objections I hear when we talk about online learning.

Further, why would teachers want to create the courses that would make them obsolete? Why indeed? What benefits can students, teachers, and school administrators get from deploying online learning? Will online learning be the primary medium of instruction or a mere supplement to classroom instruction? How much can DepEd save from not having to print textbooks every year?Maybe I should write about this in the next installment. :)

Wilson Chua is the president of Bitstop Network Services, based in Dagupan. Bitstop Network Services is an active partner of the Connected Learning Community, a project of Microsoft where the proceeds of anti-piracy activities and settlements are used to donate computer laboratories to underprivileged high schools across the country. Bitstop is also a Cisco Premier Partner.

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