The Future of Learning with Internet
Learning has been a continuous process from long time ago. In the past, we followed sages to learn things from them. Later we learnt from books. The invention of the books and printing make sharing knowledge much more easier. Nowadays, thanks to the Internet, we can learn new things at anywhere in anytime.
We are flush of new information and knowledge every day because of the web 2.0. When Internet was introduced, there is little information because only web designer make websites and share information. After the web 2.0 revolution began, every one suddenly becomes writer. Every one builds a blog and starting sharing their thoughts. A new tutorial or new methodology spreads quickly around the world because of the social networks. Moreover, the mobile technology makes reading and browsing Internet on the street possible. The whole big Internet is not only around us every day, it is around us every second now.
Wikipedia has already become a big knowledge source for students to grab academic information quickly. The contribution to many other wiki systems also encourages people to keep writing and sharing the knowledge. The writing and reading process is quite similar to the demand and supply relation. But now the trend seems to make everyone act both as demand and supply in the learning process.
It is about one month to 2010 now. Mobile learning and eBook are two of the focus in education. Some teachers is already asking students to write down their learning process and thoughts using blog and submit back as a homework. Some students will go out for a field trip and share their findings between students who may be discovering different things in the park.
With the latest technology of the paper-like eBook and augmented reality, several new methodology of learning may be able to applied and make the learning better.
May be in the future we will be reading an e-book on the train and at the same time reading the comments on the paragraphs in the margin area and discussing the book content with others.
May be years later when students go to a field trip, they have a thin eBook with them and was asking to take photos of different plant. Then the eBook will list all useful information of that kind of plant, just like you are collecting it as specimen.
The mobile technology is becoming more mature and I think there will be a lot of mobile learning or situated learning solutions come out in the next years.
