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Showing posts with label learning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label learning. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Invest In Online Education


Investing in online education is one of the wisest decisions that a non-graduate will ever make. It is also becoming popular for those who are currently working to earn a degree or another one on their own pace. There are many online programs and online schools on the internet that you can choose from. To help you better understand the greatness of online education, we will now look at its advantages. Here they are:
1. Ease of Access - with online education system, you are able to attend online classes from virtually anywhere as long as internet connectivity is available. This is great if your work requires you to constantly travel from one place to another.
2. Flexibility in Schedule - it is also great to study through online class because you can freely choose the schedule of classes that fits your busy schedule. You can study anytime you want, whether night, morning, or wee-hours but most of the time you are not tied to a class schedule.
3. Cost - online education is also more cost-efficient than studying in a real school. This is because you do not have to relocate to a new place to study, because you can just study right at the comfort of your home or wherever you might be. Also, online education also charge less than most traditional schools.
4. Pace of Learning - most of the online education programs allows a student to work or learn at his or her own pace.
5. No Sitting in Classroom - because this type of education is online, this only means that there is no need for you to sit and listen to lecture in a classroom setting. If you are a working person, then this will greatly save you time. Plus, it will also make your scheduling much easier. Students are also relieved of the burden of looking for a parking space, you do not have to leave work early so as not to miss school, or miss special family events.
6. Assignment Completion Flexibility - strict schedules do not also apply when taking up classes online. Students will have the ability to complete their assignments when they are ready, as long as they complete it before the end of semester. Exams are also announced ahead of time. Students still has the power to choose the schedule when they will take the exam.
7. Documentations - all documentations are available. All training materials and data information are available to be downloaded from the online school's website for future use. This means that you do not have to travel and get the documents yourself but simply download them online. This is also faster than having to look over a pile of documents.
Those are some of the advantages that online education will give its students. With online classes, you are able to learn while living your life in its normal pace. Online education is the best education system for working people, nursing mothers, and people who do not have the time to go to school.

Saturday, March 9, 2013

The World of Distance Education Learning Online


Education, as they say, is the biggest investment you can make for your future. For this reason, considering distance education learning online is a great way to go about getting educated for the future and getting ready for the technological challenges that life may hand your way. Many websites specialize in finding the online degree or course programs that will suit your needs. Because of the speed of changes in the world, distance education is becoming a great field to get in to and to be involved with. A good starting point is taking a course online to familiarize yourself with the basics of online education.
There is a wide variety of distance education online learning programs available for all occupations and educational preferences. You never know what type of course you could find from using your home computer and an internet connection, so be sure to spend some time browsing the web sites for information. Collecting the information about the educational courses available online is the primary job of the sites that specialize in providing this type of information. You can trust them to provide you with ample informational packages in reference to the courses available, as researching the education is their primary purpose.
Types Of Degrees Available
In today's market, there is virtually no limit to what type of education you can obtain through distance education online. You can coordinate any type of educational outcome with a school through online education and find your career path without leaving the comfort of your own home. Many places even offer a form of online instruction involving a web cam or chat set up clients that allow you to engage in actual real time discussion without leaving your computer chair. This type of interactive education is part of what is making distance education learning online so popular.
You can find online associate degree programs, online bachelor's degree programs, online master's degree programs, and even PhD programs available from a wide variety of distance education learning online web sites. These sites will offer courses to you in all educational fields. This makes getting your education even easier, as you do not have to leave the comfort of your own home and you can use your skills at the best of their ability within your field of study.

Friday, March 8, 2013

How The Education System Can Take A Great Leap Forward With Technology


Many start-ups are targeting the education market, as technology makes it easier and more cost effective to bring education to the poorer regions of the world. It's one of the hot investment areas and where there is profit, there is progress. Education is key to economic wealth and as Horace Mann so aptly stated, "Education then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of men, the balance-wheel of the social machinery."
But what about the richest countries whose education system haven't changed in generations and are under budget pressures? The government has grant programs for those start-ups looking to improve the American education process and today, investors think favorably of government funding as it does not consume equity in a start-up. On the downside, investors don't like the education system because it is notoriously cheap, has long sales cycles, and is risk averse. With such government emphasis on education improvements, the investors are sure there will be some start-up winners.
Last year, my local school district anticipated a budget shortfall and asked parents for suggestions. When I took a look at the school district's budget, I saw their problem. They needed to cut millions from their operating budget, yet 85% of their expenses were labor. It simply wasn't possible to reduce the budget in the non-labor areas by the amount needed.
Let's step back for a moment and take a quick look at what happened with telecommunications. When telecom and networking were taking a great leap forward in the bubble, the developing countries skipped the landline infrastructure and went directly to wireless and cell technologies. Now landlines are in decline in the developed countries as wireless became more cost effective, capable and preferred by customers.
Education is likely to follow suit. We have been dabbling with distance and online learning for more than a decade. The technical capability is there, now it's just a matter of adoption. The poorer and developing countries will lead the way and start with using technology to educate the masses more efficiently. Eventually this trend will transition into the US school system.
As a parent, elementary school children aren't capable of being self-directed learners, they will always benefit from the constant daily attention of teachers. As children become older, they are more capable of being self-directed and by the time they get to college, students spend little time in the formal classroom setting.
So why isn't this transition made sooner in the education system? Why can't middle school and high school students spend 2 to 3 days per week, accessing online, distance learning programs and not being taught by costly teachers?
Automation in any process produces consistency. Now there are continual complaints about the disparity among the schools in the US, some districts score well on the standardized test and some don't. Wouldn't a system encompassing partial online learning produce more uniform results? It does in manufacturing plants.
In my experience, when you have a severe budget problem and labor is biggest component, there are usually two things that happen: automation replaces labor and/or a less expensive source of labor is found.
Education is poised to take a great leap forward, which means this is a great opportunity for start-ups. My daughter is being taught like I was taught, and I was taught the way my parents and grandparents were taught. Is it time we updated the way we educate our children? The immediate market opportunity is in the non-public schools and abroad in developing countries, and whoever gets the biggest market share in those segments will be ready to capitalize on the opportunity in the public school systems.

Thursday, March 7, 2013

Plans To Strengthen The Education System Worldwide


The country's future, a large part determined by its future adults, can be shaped by those who, with education degrees in hand, enter the field of teaching. Teachers help young children develop mentally and socially, instilling in them the skills that can help them to become capable adults. When education leaders from throughout the world gather in New York in March, they plan on trying to come up with ways to strengthen the profession of teaching.
Individuals who are born with a great talent for teaching might be among those who set out to obtain education degrees. But talent isn't everything, US Department of Education's Secretary suggested in a news release from the agency. She noted that the entire education system - from recruiting teachers to maintaining and supporting them during their careers - is important as far as establishing teachers who, collectively, have a positive effect on their students.
The training that students receive as part of education degree programs in the United States might depend largely upon the type of teacher they want to become. In the book, The Teaching Gap: Best Ideas from the World's Teachers for Improving Education in the Classroom, authors James W. Stigler and James Hiebert contend that the focus in improving education should be on teaching, rather than teachers, and establishing a system that is able to learn from its own experience. Continued learning for teachers, according to Stigler and Heibert, is also important in terms of teaching.
These authors look towards 8th grade math, and point to Japan when it comes to having the most skillful and purposeful teaching system - one where teachers, through past lessons, memorization and lectures help students build "scaffolds," or establish ways for resolving problems that can at times be challenging. Teachers in high achieving countries follow different methods of instruction, Stigler and Heibert found. Teaching at its Best author Linda Burzotta Nilson recommends in part that teachers understand their students and how they learn.
Nilson's book focuses on college and university instruction and also addresses the millennial generation and distance learning, or online courses and online degree programs. Education degree programs also are available online, and students who participate in these programs might, once they enter teaching careers, find themselves relying more frequently on technology. That's in part because distance education is becoming more prevalent at the K-12 levels as well.
Students in education degree programs might learn about the federal government's "Race to the Top" competition, whereby states can obtain grant money for education reform efforts. In Florida, which was selected as a winner, the State Board of Education and Florida Department of Education this year held a "What's Working in Effective Teaching and Leadership" series.
In one session, the Vice President of Policy for the New Teacher Project, spoke about teachers being the most powerful factor in the academic success or failure of their students. He spoke of the "widget" effect, where teachers are treated in evaluation systems in different states as if one was as good as the other. There are some teachers who push students forward and others who drag them backward, he noted. By the time students obtain education degrees and enter the field, they might be evaluated differently as well.