Distance Education Technology Graphic Organizer

Siemens (2008) stated in his paper that his focus was, "the intent of exploring how many of the most significant changes within society today might influence of change the role of educators and, as a consequence, the role of instructional designers."  The graphic organizer above states many of the technologies that have changed the distance education environment and enabled it to become more interactive and effective to the point that it is now considered in many circles to be as effective the traditional brick and mortar classrooms.  The Internet has allowed online learning to take tremendous steps in the advancement of distance learning.  Siemens (2008) says in this regard that, "The popularization of the World Wide Web as a medium for commerce, communication, information sharing, and education has raised the profile of networks as a means of human organization. All of the elements above are a product of the World Wide Web.  

There is a crossover of many of the elements listed above that could fall under several categories, especially in the area communication and collaboration.  It could be argued that many of the technologies under collaboration could very well be found under communication and vice-versa.  I felt the content area could very broad when incorporating distance learning.  It would seem that anything that could scanned, uploaded, downloading, or posted to the Internet could be considered "Content".  So graphics, pictures, magazine articles, videos, etc. could all be considered content in that realm.  

In reflecting on the content of my graphic organizer, the three areas of content, collaboration, and communication are three central components of distance learning.  If there is a deficiency in any of these three areas then distance learning is not nearly as effective.  Content drives the distance learning process and, just as traditional education, serves as the foundation for the learning process.  There is a special emphasis that is placed on communication due to the fact that it must be done through virtual channels as opposed to face to face in traditional learning settings.  Collaboration is probably the latest innovation and is now feasible due to technologies such as Skype, video-conferencing, social networking, and wikis.  Overall, it is the technologies that have fallen into these three categories that have allowed for distance education to become as effective as it is today.

Siemans, G. (2008, January). Learning and knowing in networks: Changing roles for educators and designers. ITForum