Net-Learning Blog

My experience in e-learning with Net-Learning

After more than 18 years of teaching the use of technology applied to education, the Internet finally became three dimensional, not just talking about my experience in virtual worlds.

From the time the CD-ROM and raged throughout my 15 years of teaching experience in Modern Language Teacher "JR Fernandez" and teacher trainer in institutions and national conferences, I have helped (I think) to hundreds of education professionals to implement technology in their classrooms, or at least to be encouraged to take the first steps. Focusing on the use of multimedia, I have implemented together with a wonderful team, programs of self-directed learning of languages ​​in multinational companies, the self-contained world of CD-ROM gave many advantages. But the internet, well ... that was another story.

12 years ago the Internet was, for me, two-dimensional, a flat screen to look for information, a phone book. The rise of the CD and the limited options given the Web 1.0 internet meant that recourse only to make some queries to encyclopedias, or search for isolated activities. It allowed me to offer a clear integrative proposal.

But the Internet evolved into Web 2.0, to a world where users were not only consumers but also producers of information and knowledge ("prosumers" as Alvin Toffler). And I stayed behind. She was lost at the threshold of a new universe, finding no hotkey.

And that came through an e-mail from Share magazine, the proposed Net-Learning Training.

In 2010 I started my first Diploma Net-Learning/UTN, "Expert in e-learning 2.0 and Virtual Environments for language teaching" , and from that moment I began to feel something incredible: the web began to "expand" gradually tri-dimensional charge. She was not a flat screen, a blackboard, but a fourth, a school, a library, a university, a virtual classroom ... 3D space. A high, wide and deep where my virtual self, my digital identity freely navigated to achieve different objectives, different contact people, explore different resources and perform different tasks.

This feeling of discovering a new world for me literally led to do other courses with Net-Learning: " Developing conceptual and mental maps, timelines, cartoons and multimedia presentations , "and recently "Diploma in e-learning Moodle Open Source Resources. " I started to take my third degree of "Expert in implementing e-learning projects." As I entered webinar offering, to be aware of the scope and potential of this tool. I discovered virtual worlds, augmented reality, SCORM and other vermin.

After two years to train in e-learning through Net-learning confess that it is almost addictive. And it's not secretion of adrenaline or a temporary euphoria, but an awareness of the potency and act (in Aristotelian terms) of a resource and a learning mode with the ability to cross borders, social levels, levels economic and cultures, and integrate all dimensions in new, exciting and challenging.

Stephen Krashen, co-creator of the "Natural Approach" (Natural Approach) for second language learning, asserted that when the scaffolding is certain, learning is inevitable. For scaffolding can understand the provision of components, resources, tools, guides and activities that support students to promote learning. Participate in an e-learning experience well plotted and executed with professionalism allows us to not only achieve but "live" learning.

So what is it that an e-learning program should aim to achieve? In my view, some of the most important objectives are:

• promote the development of learning strategies increasingly autonomous in the student
• provide appropriate assistance tutorial guide and motivate students in their process
• allow the scope of objectives as effectively as possible
• have a coherent instructional design, varied and dynamic adaptable to different types of populations
• diagramming activities transfer of knowledge and skills to real life situations
• look basically the human side of this major release technology.

And on the other side of the proposal, the student. How can you as an adult learner get more out of a program of e-learning? In my case, I think I could integrate my studies with my work and home range of activities due to the development of some degree of systematization of learning tasks, managing my time and materials in an organized manner. It is very useful to have a folder system diagrammed in pre-PC, a routine task for each day of the week and a filing system of printed materials (... yes, I prefer to read print of the screen). One such system forces us to see how we learn best, what we need and can contribute to the process from the other side of the connection, sitting in our homes with our own daily routines and possibilities.

"We are in the millennium of the book, the century of film and media decade," said Peter Kindersley in 1996, editor of Multimedia - The Complete Guide to the CD-ROM, Internet, Web, virtual reality, 3-D games and the Information Highway *. It's not news that the changes arise with increasing speed, and that society needs people who can not only live with these changes, but also to promote them and use them to achieve their goals and those of their community or organization.

The great challenge of education in general and learning programs face of
e-learning and teachers in particular, is to help develop students' ability to adapt more effectively and quickly to these changes, that is, as educators we produce people who are capable of making decisions to achieve their goals by selecting tools and resources in the most effective way possible.

For sure, Net-Learning succeeded.

My head and heart want to thank the team of Net-Learning for the professional quality of its proposal and by the genuine warmth of the people within it.

Cecilia Sassone

Net-Learning Studied

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* Multimedia - The complete guide to CD-ROMs, the Internet, the World Wide Web, Virtual Reality, 3-D Games and the Information Superhighway, 1996, Dorling Kindersley (ed), New York.