Sunday, February 17, 2008 . 10:30 AM

On Learning: Age-old tradition, innovative new ways

ONE OF MY earliest memories of using the modern-day PC as we know it, was using a software called Encarta Encyclopedia. At the time (1998) it was such a novel idea to have a whole book on a CD-ROM, aided by stunning images, video and audio.

But that was e-learning 1.0, or what we may call "traditional" e-learning.

Maybe it's a mark of the exponential rate of growth of the Web and its associated technologies, that even certain e-learning technologies and methods can be outdated today. Alvin Toffler noted in his book Future Shock that technology was changing so fast that a person in the span of a single lifetime would find himself a stranger in his own culture. Certainly, this applies to E-learning too. Encarta was what I relied on for projects and such. Now, it's been replaced by accessible sources like blogs, wikis, etc., which are less exclusive, yet provide the same wealth of knowledge that was once the treasure of very reputed sources.

Multi-sensory and collaborative

...The features of e-learning 2.0 that distinguish it from traditional learning

IQs used to be the good old way to measure intelligence - a person's capacity to retain knowledge. Not any more. The theory of multiple intelligences was recently proposed by psychologist Howard Gardener. He asserted that each individual manifests varying levels of different intelligences, thus giving them a unique "cognitive profile."

Broadly speaking, there are three kinds of learners: auditory, visual, and kinesthetic. (The latter refers to learning by actually carrying out a physical activity, rather than listening to a lecture or merely watching a demonstration). The non-linear architecture of the Web (with its videos, audio, and interactive models of things like atoms), gives, if not a holistic learning experience, effective learning for just about any of the above categories of learners.

Another hallmark of e-learning 2.0 is collaboration. Learning is no longer strictly a one-way communication between an authority and a recipient. Learning is a continuous process of interacting with peers, like-minded people, and exchanging ideas and knowledge in an informal setting. After all, one learns best when one is relaxed. The online community just facilitates such a process, and thus makes learning fun.

To conclude, this blog entry talks about e-learning in the most basic, general sense of the term. The next few entries will talk about the specifics - namely:

-Distance Learning

-Crucial Success factors of E-learning 2.0

Also look out for entries on..:

-Scratching the Surface of better things to come..

-The Millennial Generation: Who are they, why are they the boon and the bane of society today?