Distance Learning, Online Education, Electronic Education, Electronic Learning?Call It What You Want-University
Distance Learning, Online Education, Electronic Education, Electronic Learning?Call It What You Want
Whatever you want to label "learning at home" and however you want to define the latest buzz words for non-traditional education, you can find a program and method that suits your needs. Right now over 1.2 million people in the U.S. participate in some form of distance learning, with a projected expansion to 2.3 million in just a few years.In looking at this rapidly expanding and viable form of education and training, there are a few basic things you need to consider and some decisions you need to make in order to create the environment that will best suit your needs. You need to know the what, the why, the benefits and the how of the various forms of distance learning.Distance learning (correspondence courses) started in Europe in the 1800's and has evolved into a multifaceted term that serves many purposes. Some of the forms of distance learning are: correspondence courses, online education, internet based education, electronic education, e-education, electronic learning, and e-learning. How these terms differ will depend upon how the institution defines and labels the programs which they offer. To simplify the whole concept, let's say that these terms represent ways of learning away from a "brick and mortar" facility. Some distance learning and/or online programs may or may not be connected to a university or college. There are many programs that are independent and are not affiliated with any institution.Distance learning offers a variety of paths to personal goals which include: GED, associate degrees, bachelor degrees, graduate certificates, master degrees, doctoral degrees, non-credit training courses, and others. Whether a person is seeking a degree, keeping professional skills updated, or pursuing skills for an interest area or hobby, there is a program or offering that should work.Why are so many people turning to distance learning? What are its advantages? On a personal level look at such pros as: maintaining privacy; provides convenience; enables a flexible schedule; allows for balancing job and family obligations; working at own pace, going slowly or accelerating learning; can be less expensive; great for homebound individuals; no unnecessary travel; no formal class attendance; and can "learn while you earn." These are a few of the many things that are causing quite a number of people to take an entirely different approach to attaining knowledge/skills and/or earning a degree.Those who advocate against an alternative of distance learning, often site the lack of socialization which is a part of a traditional type of education. However, not everyone is looking for the classroom activities, college events/parties, and the interactions that are a part of a school campus. Many of the classroom activities such as discussion and support can be achieved online. The other things that an online education will reinforce are: reading - ebooks, up to date
references, current research; listening - through audio lectures or clips; seeing- through graphic illustrations and demonstrations; doing - assignments, quizzes, exams, research papers; and speaking/communication - through email, chats, and electronic discussions. A distance learning program can be far more than just reading and writing.What are the requirements for becoming a part of a distance learning program? Many programs require a minimum of a GED or taking an admissions test. Usually, the process for applying will include: an application; transcripts; test scores; an essay; and letters of recommendation. The less formal the program, the less formal the requirements. There is a wide range in answering this questions. However, what is necessary for an online program is the right computer equipment with the internet connection (high speed), word processing capability; email; and multimedia player. The program you choose will provide more specific details for recommendation about equipment and software.In choosing a program there some questions to ask as you do your research and make your selection. Ask about the following: help/support is offered; qualifications of the instructors; number of years the institution has provided services; is it an accredited program; details about the curriculum; and multimedia elements of the program. By the way, accreditation is voluntary since there is no officially sanctioned entity in existence. However, most schools considered the six regional accrediting agencies listings to be legitimate agencies. Ask if it is regionally accredited.The last thing you need to think about is your motivation and work ethic. If you are a good reader (good reading comprehension skills) who doesn't procrastinate and can avoid distractions, you will be a good candidate for an alternative approach to education. In this age of global education and the need for current knowledge and skills, this is a fast delivery system that will bring all the technological advancement right into your living room instantaneously. It works for more than a million people, and it can work for you.Visit our Resource Center on Distance Learning at: http://sbmag.org/distancelearning.htmlCopyright usage: No permission is needed to reproduce this story. The About the Author statement must remain in tact. We also request notification of where the article is being used so reciprocal links can be considered. mailto:barb@sbmag.orgAbout the Author
Barbara Snyder is a retired California Distinguished School Principal and Coordinator For Human Resources. She has a master's degree in Curriculum and Instruction. She holds elementary education, secondary, community college, and administrative credentials. She is currently the publisher of http://EducationResourcesNetwork.com, co-publisher of Strictly Business Magazine, http://www.sbmag.org.
Future of Electronic Publishing – Ezine-Publishing
Future of Electronic Publishing
UNESCO's somewhat arbitrary definition of "book" is: "Non-periodical printed publication of at least 49 pages excluding covers".The emergence of electronic publishing was supposed to change all that. Yet a bloodbath of unusual proportions has taken place in the last few months. Time Warner's iPublish and MightyWords (partly owned by Barnes and Noble) were the last in a string of resounding failures which cast in doubt the business model underlying digital content. Everything seemed to have gone wrong: the dot.coms dot bombed, venture capital dried up, competing standards fractured an already fragile marketplace, the hardware (e-book readers) was clunky and awkward, the software unwieldy, the e-books badly written or already in the public domain.Terrified by the inexorable process of disintermediation (the establishment of direct contact between author and readers, excluding publishers and bookstores) and by the ease with which digital content can be replicated - publishers resorted to draconian copyright protection measures (euphemistically known as "digital rights management"). This further alienated the few potential readers left. The opposite model of "viral" or "buzz" marketing (by encouraging the dissemination of free copies of the promoted book) was only marginally more successful.Moreover, e-publishing's delivery platform, the Internet, has been transformed beyond recognition since March 2000.From an open, somewhat anarchic, web of networked computers - it has evolved into a territorial, commercial, corporate extension of "brick and mortar" giants, subject to government regulation. It is less friendly towards independent (small) publishers, the backbone of e-publishing. Increasingly, it is expropriated by publishing and media behemoths. It is treated as a medium for cross promotion, supply chain management, and customer relations management. It offers only some minor synergies with non-cyberspace, real world, franchises and media properties. The likes of Disney and Bertelsmann have swung a full circle from considering the Internet to be the next big thing in New Media delivery - to frantic efforts to contain the red ink it oozed all over their otherwise impeccable balance sheets.But were the now silent pundits right all the same? Is the future of publishing (and other media industries) inextricably intertwined with the Internet?The answer depends on whether an old habit dies hard. Internet surfers are used to free content. They are very reluctant to pay for information (with precious few exceptions, like the "Wall Street Journal"'s electronic edition). Moreover, the Internet, with 3 billion pages listed in the Google search engine (and another 15 billion in "invisible" databases), provides many free substitutes to every information product, no matter how superior. Web based media companies (such as Salon and Britannica.com) have been experimenting with payment and pricing models. But this is besides the point. Whether in the form of subscription (Britannica), pay per view (Questia), pay to print (Fathom), sample and pay to buy the physical product (RealRead), or micropayments (Amazon) - the public refuses to cough up.Moreover, the advertising-subsidized free content Web site has died together with Web advertising. Geocities - a community of free hosted, ad-supported, Web sites purchased by Yahoo! - is now selectively shutting down Web sites (when they exceed a certain level of traffic) to convince their owners to revert to a monthly hosting fee model. With Lycos in trouble in Europe, Tripod may well follow suit shortly. Earlier this year, Microsoft has shut down ListBot (a host of discussion lists). Suite101 has stopped paying its editors (content authors) effective January 15th. About.com fired hundreds of category editors. With the ugly demise of Themestream, WebSeed is the only content aggregator which tries to buck the trend by relying (partly) on advertising revenue.Paradoxically, e-publishing's main hope may lie with its ostensible adversary: the library. Unbelievably, e-publishers actually tried to limit the access of library patrons to e-books (i.e., the lending of e-books to multiple patrons). But, libraries are not only repositories of knowledge and community centres. They are also dominant promoters of new knowledge technologies. They are already the largest buyers of e-books. Together with schools and other educational institutions, libraries can serve as decisive socialization agents and introduce generations of pupils, students, and readers to the possibilities and riches of e-publishing. Government use of e-books (e.g., by the military) may have the same beneficial effect.As standards converge (Adobe's Portable Document Format and Microsoft's MS Reader LIT format are likely to be the winners), as hardware improves and becomes ubiquitous (within multi-purpose devices or as standalone higher quality units), as content becomes more attractive (already many new titles are published in both print and electronic formats), as more versatile information taxonomies (like the Digital Object Identifier) are introduced, as the Internet becomes more gender-neutral, polyglot, and cosmopolitan - e-publishing is likely to recover and flourish.This renaissance will probably be aided by the gradual decline of print magazines and by a strengthening movement for free open source scholarly publishing. The publishing of periodical content and academic research (including, gradually, peer reviewed research) may be already shifting to the Web. Non-fiction and textbooks will follow. Alternative models of pricing are already in evidence (author pays to publish, author pays to obtain peer review, publisher pays to publish, buy a physical product and gain access to enhanced online content, and so on). Web site rating agencies will help to discriminate between the credible and the in-credible. Publishing is moving - albeit kicking and screaming - online.About The AuthorSam Vaknin is the author of "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited" and "After the Rain - How the West Lost the East". He is a columnist in "Central Europe Review", United Press International (UPI) and ebookweb.org and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory, Suite101 and searcheurope.com. Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government of Macedonia.His web site: http://samvak.tripod.com
Electronic Publishing Explained – E-Books
Electronic Publishing Explained
An eBook is basically a document in the form of web pages that are put together, using special software, which is released in the form of a file that can be downloaded onto your computer's hard drive. Many people may think it is no different than a web site, but there are important differences.You may happen upon a site that is offering a free eBook download you are interested in. When you actually download the eBook you are downloading an ".exe" file, which is the most common format. Some eBooks are also offered in PDF format as well. When you double click on this file it then opens the main page, which is in HTML, web page format. There may be many pages included in the eBook but you cannot access them unless you open the eBook itself. When you download the ".exe" file that is all you see until you activate it by clicking on it. From the main page the author gives you access to what they want you to have access to.One important feature of an eBook is that you can choose to not allow printing or copying. This may be very important to you if you have material that you want to protect. You may have written a book on "How To make A Waterfall Mirror" and give the reader snippets of the book in your eBook, but you don't want them to be able to print or copy any of the material. Not that the material is completely safe, after all there are people out there that are going to copy or steal your work if they get a chance, no matter what steps you take, but it gives the reader the idea that the information is valuable to you.On a web site, to get the some of the same protection, you would have to include directory or page protection on your site and have the visitor register for a password, which many will not. Then even if they do register, they may loose their password or not come back at all. If you don't know much about CGI scripts or how to set password protection through your server's control panel then this becomes difficult, unless you can afford to hire someone to do it for you. Even with that once the visitor is into your site, using a password, they can still copy as much of the material they want. With the eBook, once you set the "No Copying" and "No Printing" option, the reader would have to actually copy the material by typing it out him or herself. This offers more protection for your material. One of the challenges of a web site is keeping the visitor on it as long as possible so that they find something that they are actually interested in. Even if you have material that the visitor is genuinely interested in, many things can happen that may cause you to loose that visitor forever. The power may go out while they are on your site, they forget to bookmark your site, they may get distracted and shut the computer off, etc. With the eBook, once downloaded, the information is on the reader's computer until they decide to delete it. I've come across eBooks and files that I have downloaded months before and forgotten about but have stumbled across on my hard drive while searching for something else.You can even set the eBook to include an icon on the reader's desktop to remind them to read your eBook. If the reader sees your icon each time their desktop loads you may get a few more visits, maybe even a sale or two.You can include links back to your site, or any other site in the eBook to direct the reader to more information or to a sales page. Keeping with the same idea above you may want to have a page on other woodworking or fountain books for example that goes to Amazon.com or to other sites. You may have affiliate programs that you are associated with that you can earn commissions from any sales resulting from people clicking through from your eBook.You can have your readers personalize it themselves. People get excited when they see their name on something. Most eBook software allows you to setup the eBook so that people can actually put their own personal information in the eBook, and give it away themselves on their web site. This is called "Regrinding". If you see a free eBook download and it states that you can "Rebrand" it, that is what it means, you can personalize it. You can even run your own affiliate program and have others personalize the eBook and have the opportunity to earn some money. That's a great incentive for people to advertise your products or services.We will have more information on how you can develop your own eBook, distribute it, run your own affiliate program and have others selling your products and services in later articles.In conclusion eBooks maybe seen by some as just glorified web sites but in fact with the option of protecting your material, the ability to allow others to personalize it, and the chance that viewers will add it to their desktop and view it at a later date, eBooks give you much more flexibility in your online business marketing efforts.Read more articles by this author, about this and other subjects, here.About The AuthorBob Power has been an Internet entrepreneur for longer than he would like to remember. He is currently on a voyage of learning, thanks to his readers, who have asked him to answer questions about topics they want more information on. You can see some of the surprising, and at times exciting results, and variety of topics and paths this has taken him on, or to contact Bob Power please click here.These articles may be reproduced exactly as shown above. No revisions or changes are permitted.