Online Education

Another online service, more commonly used now, is online Education. Now from the age of 5 when our schooling life starts we spend at least an hour a week on a computer during school. We learn to type efficiently and use the web productively. There are many websites that are made purely for the education of young people whether it be past papers or games to stimulate the mathematical mind, there seems to be more of a selection of sources on the internet than in the local library.

Online Education for the Students

 

BBC Bitesize

There are many websites and apps for students to use online to help them with their school work. A prime example of this is BBC’s Bitesize, they have a range of educational games and videos to help with students from KS1 to GCSE. They have put together help for the different educations systems criteria in the UK, with sub sections for Englan

d, Northern Island, Scotland and Wales. There are also practice tests and questions to answer throughout the activities.

However there are a few limitations, BBC Bitesize have no conne

ction with any of the exam boards, so the practice questions and tests for activities are often very unlike the ones you get into exams, although the practice is useful it is often not relevant.

 Sam Learning

Another example of a website that  is used to help educate students in a more interactive way is Sam learning, they have nearly everything a student could need and they also have the criteria and practice questions provided by exam boards. Sam learning in schools also becomes a type of competition as you are competing against your peers to get the most points. This motivates people to do more work.  

Slide Share & Student Rooms

There also revision sources for students and places for them to interact with teachers or other students to help them for their exams. An example of this would be Slide Share which is where teachers can post the PowerPoints that they did for the lessons. This means that you can look back on lessons and get the key notes. Another example would be Student Room which is where students can ask each other questions and other students help to answer them, this is a great source for students before they sit exams and if they need a little bit of extra help they may find this help in other students.

YouTube

Additional to this lots of students use YouTube, this is where students can watch tutorials or teachers explaining concepts of the subject. There are a

lot of revision sources such as the My GCSE Science channel which a teacher went through each section in the AQA science books. He used examples and links each section to a real life scenario making it more understandable.

 A more recent feature of online Education would be being able to take online degrees and tests that go towards a qualification, it allows you to research and do your work in the comfort of your own home. It also means they can work on their degrees in a more flexible way; they do not have to commute to a university but can instead even keep an existing job and stay at home. 

Online Education for the Teacher

There also websites for teachers to use to help in their lessons. For example there are activities for the teacher to do with the students and different ways to teach eh subjects to make them more interesting. There are things like team building activities to stimulate the peer’s communication skills.

Exam boards also offer help with the teachers teaching style of the sections in the specification and they also offer mark schemes and practice exam papers for them to give to the students in preparation for their exams.

There also websites like socrative that allow the student and the teacher to interact with each other so that they can ask and answer questions digitally. Students can also vote and choose an option.

Teachers also submit a lot of students work online, for example when you do coursework it often is sent online to the examiner. This is a more convenient and efficient way for an examiner to mark the work.

Scopes of Online Education

•       You are able to do school work nearly everywhere
•        You are able to access articles and media that may contribute to your understanding
•          Many online websites help to keep track of your progress in your subjects
•          Online education also helps you instantly get hold of a wider range of information instantly.

Limitations of Online Education

•          Children and students may become too dependant on the internet that they may lack literacy skills
•          Library’s are used less so may begin to close down
•          Children become reliant on the internet for research that they do not know how to use books or newspapers to find out information.
•          The classroom and teaching becomes more reliant on technology rather than physical interaction and text book use 

My own experience with Online Education

I use Online Education on a daily basis. When I was in primary school we would use online education to learn how to type and we would do activities to test our abilities to gather information online. Secondary school was a big step up in the amount of Online Education that I used, we had ICT lessons and in maths we would use things like MyMaths  to do interactive maths. We would also use Sam Learning in things like Spanish where we would have to memorise our writing and practice our grammar. I use Online Education in my own time outside of my lessons, for research on my subjects and for revision. I use Slideshare often because it has teachers lesson notes which I can easily use as revision notes. I also used YouTube for the majority of the GCSE Science revision that I did, as a teacher had produced videos in which he showed each topic and step-by-step  instructions for calculation's.