Encountering E-Learning Education

This was a mind-mapping activity on my first day of the e-learning summer subject. Individually and then collaboratively we brainstormed about how the internet could be used in primary school contexts. It was interesting to observe the great diversity of ideas we developed as a class. It was also helpful to recognise how invaluable the internet is as a teaching and learning tool. It facilitates in-depth, engaging and meaningful learning tasks as it is interactive, highly stimulating and allows for great inter-connectivity across the globe educationally. The internet also lends itself well to student-centred learning with access to a phenomenal range of software and educational resources. Students can also use the internet as a means for publishing their work and displaying it to a wide and diverse audience. This gives greater meaning and value to learning. Students can also engage with educational experts globally though blogging or Skype. Additionally the internet can be used to facilitate further learning at home and in the future as students do not need to be in the classroom to access the vast array of educational online resources available through the internet.

We used Inspiration to create this mind-map but Matthew informed us that another useful online mind-mapping tool is bubbl.us which we could use in our LAMS learning sequence. I browsed the internet to investigate online mind-mapping tools and discovered a blog post by Ian McKenzie which listed other online software which may be useful. I have listed them below. Certainly mind-mapping is an excellent learning tool for collating and drawing together students’ thoughts and ideas. Mind-mapping online is useful on a number of levels. Firstly in digital form it is easy to manipulate and add to either individually and collaboratively compared to pen and paper. Secondly it allows students to publish their work online and share it with a global audience. Thirdly it can be accessed from outside the classroom creating a wider learning sphere.

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