Technology in Education

Web Based Learning

Can you ever imagine being faced with a medium that requires neither your presence, nor your lectures and not even your daily interaction with people you teach. Your first reaction to ‘Teaching on the Net’ may just be – ‘Well, that’s not teaching.’

However, with an open mind and the willingness to explore this new avenue, you will find that it is as exciting a medium as print must have been when it took the literate world by storm. The question now remains – how can you use this technology to add value to your teaching skills ? The most significant advantage of this new medium is collaboration of teaching and learning methods for professional as well as individual growth.

Over the last forty years teacher-learner relationships have undergone tremendous changes – the classroom has taken on a new look, syllabi has been reconstructed and so on. The internet takes you much further.

1. You can use the internet to erase distance and boundary thereby communicating information to anybody anywhere in the world. The number of students that you can reach is wider than you can ever imagine. Your expert knowledge of a subject is therefore not limited to the four walls of a classroom and 40 students.
   
   
2. You and your students will network with students the world over to share data and discoveries. You can encourage your students to get together with experts in a field and learn outside the constraints of a prescribed syllabus.
   
   
3. You can encourage your students to delve into the information available on the net. They can be encouraged to conduct research in subjects that they are engaged in. They may do this for fun or to whet their curiosity and interest.
   
   
4. You will no longer cater to time bound teaching. Instead, you will adapt to individual learning styles by providing qualitative inputs because your students will now learn from your unit at their pace and according to their individual learning styles. You can now support a student – learning environment.
   
   
5. Take the initiative and strengthen the basic concepts in your subject. Take a closer look at how you as a teacher can improve the text and provide an in-depth look at the learning process.