eLearning eVolution

My last post talked about the rising cost of fuel driving (pun intended) a significant rise in online class enrollments. Here’s something else for academic institutions looking to save big time on gas to consider: the virtual field trip.

For example:

- Florida Virtual School uses Elluminate Live! for virtual field trips, like “visiting” the Grand Canyon using Google Earth, connecting with a class in England to hear a speaker from Parliment, and sending streaming video of a trip to a zoo to those students who couldn’t attend in person. Learn more.

- Tom Moncrief from Union County Public Schools uses Elluminate vRoom to take his students on virtual field trips to interview the cast of the musical Rent or view a laparascopic surgery and talk to the surgeon. Learn more. Plus here’s an article about another virtual field trip organized by Moncrief during which some fifth-grade students got some face time with NASA engineers.

So where do you want to take your class today? I guess the answer is that you’re only limited by your imagination. But you sure don’t have to be limited by the cost of gas.

- Beth, Elluminate Goddess of Communication

Gary here. Almost every day, I hear from people who say “Yeah, but can you really teach with this?” or “Why would I want to do that online?” I have some really great answers, but then someone will tell me that of course I feel that way, I sell the stuff! (This, even though I am not a sales dude - plus I am also sincerely concerned about maximizing the use of my education tax dollars and increasing the efficacy of learning - but that is another post altogether [that I hope my boss will approve].)

Lucky for me, at Elluminate we have customers and partners like Dr. J Ricky Cox at Murray State University in Kentucky, USA. I got on a web conference with him, hoping to get a few anecdotes about either pen computing or interactive whiteboards and his use of them with real time collaboration for a presentation I am working on.

I literally asked Dr. Cox one question, and here was his answer. (The content pretty is much unedited except to make it shorter.)

(Click image to pop the 5 minute presentation )

Warm regards, and “keep onlinin’ ”

Gary Dietz

P.S. I really like conversing with people online and whipping out Adobe Audition or Techsmith Camtasia and editing together a nice story. I can even do this over the phone with my handy-dandy Olympus digital audio recorder. If you want to create a story with me this way, drop me a line at gdietz@elluminate.com

Great BBC video about how students who can’t be in a physical school setting (due to health or other reasons) are really getting “Real Education” even when at a distance. Thanks to our UK partner, Accipio Learning for this video. Check it out at http://youtube.com/watch?v=4hMGbTPnWIc

Rajeev