eSpok - Company blog

I had the chance at the beginning of this week to travel to Hong Kong to attend the 2009 International Conference on ICT in teaching and learning. I would like to thank the organizers as the conference was truly a valuable learning experience. Provided here is a small summary of what I heard at the conference and my thoughts upon these things.

Blended learning which can be defined as alternating classes with a tutor and learning with the computer is considered the most effective way to learn today. It not only increases the effectiveness of the students learning, but it also permits a wider access to education as it makes it cheaper and easily accessible from remote places.

Naturally Mr Peter Olaf Looms reminded us how important it is to think about accessibility so that everybody can truly benefit from education provided. He insisted that a big part of the population (20% if I remember correctly) may encounter this problem of accessibility.

Support of LMS (Learning Management System) and blended learning is now imperative for education organization. The technology is mature and using multimedia and the internet brings education closer to what the learners are actually using in their daily life (websites such as Youtube for video etc…). In order for an organization to succeed in using this new technology it is crucial that the technology functions very well and that it is easy to use. This seems quite obvious but one may not necessarily see this reflected in many of the online systems which have been developed in the past. Another point raised was the fact that a LMS should be student oriented. We should create products for the students and not for the administration of the school and administrators within the school.

Social online learning which will likely be the style of education used in the next generation is not yet totally mature. However, it is really a promising field. I was able to participate in a workshop with Prof. Bebo White from Stanford University. Professor White was able to show us how Twitter, Facebook, and StumbleUpon can be used in the purpose of education. I found it interesting, but the main drawback is that all of these tools are not centralized making it harder to use in the process of education.

Second life is actually a powerful tool (for those who still doubt it). I was very surprised to discover it during the presentation of next year conference by SIM University who hosts the conference in 2010.  We had a tour in Second life where you can easily see different videos, go to different stands, and listen to different pre-recorded speeches. Second Life offers a fun way to deliver content and therefore makes it interesting for using in online education.

For eSpok this conference was a good occasion to consider the future of our product and how we are going to integrate the latest social tools in our product.

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