Why Online Eduction Needs to "Get Social"
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Subject: [PD 5059] Why Online Education Needs to "Get Social"
From: Jackie A. Taylor
Date: Fri Aug 6 09:01:22 EDT 2010
Hello again,
I thought you might find this article from Mashable of interest: Why Online
Education Needs to Get Social
http://mashable.com/2010/08/06/online-education-social/ (I heard about it
on Twitter.)
In it Marco Masoni writes that online courses are not tapping real-time
events and because of this, we're not engaging the younger adults who have
grown up in a digitized world. As many of you know, online courses are
expensive and time-consuming to develop and take ongoing resources to
support. Keeping high retention rates can be difficult, no matter the
participant's age. I'm sure that some of you have faced the issue of
updating existing online courses, taking better advantage of the social
media and other technology-based realms.
Masoni writes, "The Web, as a real-time medium, is begging us to build
innovative courses that can be used for the rapid delivery of education
designed in a way that integrates current news, information, insights and
research about topics like the oil spill and thousands of other current
issues."
Do you see a need to create or refine your online courses so they are of a
more "Webby" caliber, as Masoni describes? If so, tell us more about that.
Also, what are ways you might integrate real-time events and relevant social
media into online instruction or online courses for teacher PD? And why?
Thanks,
Jackie Taylor
PD List Facilitator
Jackie at jataylor.net
