the use of the internet and distance learning
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Moulay Ismail UniversityFaculty Of Letters And
HumanitiesEnglish Department
Master program Communication in contexts
Computer Skills For Research
The Use of the Internet and Distance Learning
Presented by: Reda Lamtiri and Rajae [email protected]
Outline:
A brief introduction to the internet. The close connectedness between the internet and
distance learning. The internet and the learning environment. Communication devices and softwares used in
distance learning. Digital media. Adventages and drawbacks of distance learning.
Give a man a fish, and you will feed him for one day, teach a man how to fish, and you
will feed him for a lifetime. (Chinese proverb)
Give a student a language course, and you teach him for a semester. Teach a student to become a technology-assisted language
learner, and you will teach him for a lifetime. (Gary Cziko, 2005)
What is the internet?
The internet is a network of networks, and a very large Wide Area Network (WAN) joining many government,
university and private computers together and providing an infrastructure for the use of E-mail, bulletin boards,
file archives, hypertext documents, databases and other computational forms.
It is also The vast collection of computer networks which form and act as a single huge network for transport of
data and messages across distances which can be anywhere from the same office to anywhere in the world.
The close connectedness between the internet and D-learning.
The internet technology provides individuals strong opportunities to foster their learning process with updated courses, consequently increasing their
skills to better integrate the international job market. New internet technology promises a revolutionary
instructional system full of facilities for both students and teachers. In fact, many countries are very concerned with some technology attributes to promote a qualitative learning and teaching
environment and a shining educational future.
The internet and the learning environment
As the cost of the internet decreases and the availability of technological equipments increases, many universities worldwide have shifted from the traditional to the modern way of teaching. As a matter of fact, this shift has reshaped root and branch the history of education. The internet has become an increasingly important feature of the learning environment for students; many
surveys have proved the use of the internet as an essential study aid outside and inside the classroom. Furthermore, students used to undertake their studies
the traditional way, depending on handwriting and taking notes from the blackboard on which courses were written
by chalk, adding many other conventional ways and activities that were time consuming (ex: reading or
listening in overcrowded classes), which rendered both teachers and students tired and unfocused.
The internet hasn’t only facilitated the educational
process, but has also brought the world into the classroom. Students have become more open to
different resources from different cultural aspects, they have also become aware of
cultural differences, yet the internet has helped them efficiently to reduce cultural
misunderstandings.
Communication devices and softwares used in distance
learning Another important attribute is the availability of
communication devices. Numerous communication devices are existing and
performing very well, the most common ones are cellphones, laptops… and new inventions are
occurring day by day in a generation called: “the finger generation”
The biggest internet invention will be soon unveiled with the launch of software which could put giant search engines like “Google” in the shade! The
new system is called “Wolfram Alpha”. This system is a global store of information under
development which understands and responds to ordinary language the same way a person does.
“Wolfram Alpha” is considered as a new paradigm for using computers and the web;
some computer experts have even compared WA as an emerging artificial intelligence and a
big step towards a self-organizing internet. WA could also be used in mobile devices like iphone under the latest wireless internet service
i-mode (i-mode refers to “I am faster than WAP”).
Distance learning softwares are the code behind the processes that everyone uses to participate in
an online educational environment. While we simply sign in and post assignments,
communicate with professors, take exams, and receive our results, none of these things happen without the integration of very complex distance learning softwares. There are the simple distance
learning software programs that are used in Literature subjects, but there are also very
graphically and interactively complex distance learning software programs which work with
some complicated subjects such as Computer Science, Physics and Mathematics.
Some distance learning softwares
Digital media Digital media and the new communication devices are very crucial
for both teachers and students. Thanks to digital media and computers that teachers and students can store, transmit, and
receive endless digitized information. Digital media is often referred to as electronic media which work on
digital codes based on the numeral system; it goes hand in glove with the communication machines like computers. Computers are
digital machines because at their most basic level they can distinguish between just two values, 0 and 1, or off and on. There is
no simple to represent all the values in between, such as 0.25. All data that a computer processes must be encoded digitally, as a series of zeroes and ones. This way communication devices can
store, send and receive endless resources of information and then the receiver has only to enable his machine to encode the sent
information. Here are the most common examples of digital media: E-books E-journals E-learning…
Resources:
http://math.agnesscott.edu/mathdept/softtabl.htm
www.visionael.com/services/glossary/