Welcome to the Elearning Companion!
It seems that more and more districts and schools are investigating online learning or elearning as a way to help prepare today's students to succeed in an increasingly complex and technology-driven economy. Whether this is driven because of dwindling budgets and resources or the recognition that students need more opportunities to learn, the fact is that online learning is seeing a huge surge in growth.
Today students have grown up with the Internet and seem to thrive in a multi-tasking, multimedia driven, highly communicative environment. Learning online is easy for them... it comes naturally.
Schools are now discovering that online courses can fill gaps and satisfy unmet needs in course offerings as well as supplement traditional classroom instruction with engaging materials and individualized instruction.
This interest in online learning is spawning many questions among district administrators, teachers, and parent about what online learning is all about and what is possible:
- What does and online course look like?
- What course can effectively be taught online?
- What training and professional development do online teachers need?
- How does a district begin an online learning program?
- What policies, rules, and requirements must be put in place?
- How can online learning support our traditional classrooms?
- Should we build our own online content or purchase content from a vendor?
Unfortunately there are few resources available for districts to turn to for answers. The Elearning Companion hopes to be that resource for districts to help them with their online learning needs.
Elearning or online learning comprises all forms of electronically supported learning and teaching. The information and communication systems, whether networked or not, serve as specific media to implement the learning process. The term will still most likely be utilized to reference out-of-classroom and in-classroom educational experiences via technology, even as advances continue in regard to devices and curriculum.
E-learning is essentially the computer and network-enabled transfer of skills and knowledge. E-learning applications and processes include Web-based learning, computer-based learning, virtual classroom opportunities and digital collaboration. Content is delivered via the Internet, intranet/extranet, audio or video tape, satellite TV, and CD-ROM. It can be self-paced or instructor-led and includes media in the form of text, image, animation, streaming video and audio.
Abbreviations like CBT (Computer-Based Training), IBT (Internet-Based Training) or WBT (Web-Based Training) have been used as synonyms to e-learning. Today one can still find these terms being used, along with variations of e-learning such as elearning, Elearning, and eLearning. The terms will be utilized throughout this article to indicate their validity under the broader terminology of Elearning.
Our Mission
Our mission is quite simply to support school districts, administrator, teachers, parents, and others with resources to aid in the district and school implementation of online elearning programs for students and teachers.
We've never offered online learning to our students before. We know we need to do this, but we're just not sure where to begin! ~ District Superintendent
Our goal at the Elearning Companion is to be a resource for that superintendent to help him get started with elearning.
