Learning Goes Hi-Tech

1. Introduction

Traditional education is carried out in classrooms where the teacher presents the learning material to a group of students. The education technology depends mainly on the teacher and the students must physically participate in the learning process. Regardless of obvious advantages of direct contact between a teacher and a student and immediate feedback, the traditional classroom education has many disadvantages. For example if the student has no ability to take part in some lesson he or she will miss the training material. These disadvantages lead to search for new and more effective educational methods.

However, the educational industry has entered the fourth stage of its development that is the use of “Communication and Information Technology (ICT)”. This revolution in the educational industry was preceded by three previous ones. Carnegie Foundation summarized these three revolutions as follows:

• 1.

  The invention of writing;

• 2.

  The use of textbooks in schools after the invention of printing;

• 3.

  The appearance of mainstream education.

The fourth revolution can contribute to the achievement of the mainstream education by employing E-Learning technologies, communication and networking technologies to facilitate learners in accessing the learning material.

2. Evolution In Education

The evolution in education and training at a distance (see Figure 1) can be characterised as a move from dLearning (distance learning) to eLearning (electronic learning) to mLearning (mobile learning). These three stages of development correspond to the influence on society of the Industrial Revolution of the 18th to 19th centuries, the Electronics Revolution of the 1980s and the Wireless Revolution of the last years of the 20th century.

Figure 1.

Evolution in education

4. Electronic Learning Or E-Learning

The term “E-Learning” was coined in the late 1990s to describe the use of technology to deliver learning and training programs. E-Learning is a term that means something different to almost everyone who uses it. Some think of it only as a web-based self-study while others realize E-Learning can encompass real-time learning and collaboration. E-learning is the unifying term to describe the fields of online learning, web-based learning, and technology-delivered instructions.

It has been said that there are two reasons why we learn; some learning is essentially forced on us while the other is what we sit back and enjoy. E-Learning has brought back the joy in learning through its innovative and interactive content and delivery (see Figure 2).

Figure 2.

e-learning module