Academic Growth

Features are popping up all over the internet that help towards being able to use is as a permenant source of information and research material. With these resources hitting the internet it's lowering the need to use books and developing the way we can go through our education giving us more option about how we want to learn. 

Online Encylclopedias/ Academic search engines

Google scholar gives all internet browsers access to articles, case studies and technical reports whether they be a digital or physical copy. Below shows google scholar in action. As you can see 'Plato has been searched for and different results have appeared below the search. These results are not just those which you would find on the regular google but are tailored to academic research etc. The results shown are first: A book written by Plato himself and second a case study written by Plato.

On the same note of resources on the internet wiki's such as wikipidea and Catawiki provide an excellent and expansive source of information available to us. These wiki's may be written by the average person, so could be argued to be unreliable. It is found that they are frequently updates by other members who specialise in that particular field, so are kept at a reasonable standard.

VLE’s

Virtual learning environments such as Moodle establishes a relationship between pupils and teachers because teachers can put pieces of work and study tools onto it that the student can access them. This would mean that after a lesson a teacher could post the presentation they gave in the lesson and a summary sheet. Allowing Pupils to make notes in there own time and maximise their use of the lesson.

However this can cause a problem because children feel like they are expected to use the online resources rather than ask the teacher outside of school hours. This can mean that the student actually accomplishes less in the hour slot for the lesson, and can leave them feeling confused about what they are meant to be doing.

Digital libraries

Currently there is only one digital library available at the moment (Kindle) but they are currently being created all over the world. These libraries mean we don’t have to leave our on home or carry a physical book. It can be argued that this could cause problems with getting old documents onto the internet.

Plus if someone has collected an entire series of books and then they get a kindle, they might prefer to complete the set rather than buy/borrow it from a digital library.

Google scholar do have some free reports that we can access on a loan basis, so can be used as a sort of library.

Online learning websites

Online learning websites allows for independent learning. Open University is a prime example of people using the internet in order to further their education. In the future these online learning websites have the possibilities to be part of home schooling and a vital learning instrument.

Gets primary schools involved

Does this mean teachers are not needed?