Thursday, April 11, 2013

Sharing Information with Multimedia Technologies

When I was reading the chapter 8&9, I thought of an experience about learning online when I was in middle school. At that time, there appeared an emerging way of learning-- what we called "School Online"--in China. It applys the advantages of internet and excellent resources of Chinese top schools to provide educational services for both schools (or teachers) and students. It is a good example of sharing educational resources. At that time, I selected an online school called "101 School Online". 101 is a very famous key middle school in Beijing. It has a lot of excellent teachers and resources. With such advantages, it openned up a series of online courses, which were designed by its experienced teachers.For example, if I ordered the 3rd grade science online course and if I learned "living things and Non-living things" today, I could find all of important information when I went to the website of school online.It will show enough specific explainations and worksheet, so students can learn online. If you find something you don't understand clearly, you can write down your questions in the area of raising questions. Teachers from 101 middle school will answer you in less than 24 hours online.I benefited from this online school a lot because educational resources are not equally distributed in China. Good teachers always focus in the big cities, such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. Students in other provinces will hardly  get enough excellent guidances.In my opinion, "online school" are not only good for students, also helpful for schools and teachers. Schools  and teachers in other undeveloped provinces will save lots of time and money in trainning. But it does not very universal in the whole country, one reason is for the fee, others is about the time. For most of high school students, they seldom have enough time to learn online. So it tends to be too late to look for guidance online if they find something they do not undedrstand. So you have any good ideas to solve these two problems?