Levellers are events that have the maximum reach and the maximum impact. Looking back without them is a museum view for the gen-next. Imagine telling the kids about black and white TV, antennas that picked up only one channel, the planning to be at place at a given time without real time mobile conversation and coordination,...
The first great leveller was the wheel which set up big indutries of retail and automobiles and still runs the fortune in number of small, large appliances/applications. In recent times, they are mobile telephony and internet. Games have always been a great community leveller. In India, all it takes is a bat and ball and a small un-obstrusive place to get a couple form a group, break up into teams, move to a ground, conduct tournament, attract crowd and have a festival time for sports.
Within internet users, social applications have created die-hard fan following that people have started living with. People prefer chatting, tweeting, connecting to a distant world instead of kicking a conversation with neighbours.
e-Learning as a product within internet has the same potential. A self introspection case led me to the following discovery.
I come from a small town and recently visited my native after 3.5 years.During our school days, I realize that in competitions city based schools were given the aura of success. While in most cases, my school teams would have beat some tough opponents, credit then would be "individualized and rare form of luck", while for schools of "brand" were always "generalized and passed on as a normal routine feather in cap".
Often, as child, teenager, we always felt that the score of knowledge is greater in these places, due to the accessibility and availability of "geeky likes". Talk about a quiz club, sports teachers, stadiums, clubs, college grounds, auditoriums, number of occasions to showcase talent, amount of cross-pollination that improves the class act, exposure to mediums and influences are abundant in city places.
With penetration of computers, internet, CD forms of learning being made available, I could now a visible yet slow shift that is beginning to settle the score of knowledge at same level. What games would then be played is an eventual guess.
Your guesses please.
The first great leveller was the wheel which set up big indutries of retail and automobiles and still runs the fortune in number of small, large appliances/applications. In recent times, they are mobile telephony and internet. Games have always been a great community leveller. In India, all it takes is a bat and ball and a small un-obstrusive place to get a couple form a group, break up into teams, move to a ground, conduct tournament, attract crowd and have a festival time for sports.
Within internet users, social applications have created die-hard fan following that people have started living with. People prefer chatting, tweeting, connecting to a distant world instead of kicking a conversation with neighbours.
e-Learning as a product within internet has the same potential. A self introspection case led me to the following discovery.
I come from a small town and recently visited my native after 3.5 years.During our school days, I realize that in competitions city based schools were given the aura of success. While in most cases, my school teams would have beat some tough opponents, credit then would be "individualized and rare form of luck", while for schools of "brand" were always "generalized and passed on as a normal routine feather in cap".
Often, as child, teenager, we always felt that the score of knowledge is greater in these places, due to the accessibility and availability of "geeky likes". Talk about a quiz club, sports teachers, stadiums, clubs, college grounds, auditoriums, number of occasions to showcase talent, amount of cross-pollination that improves the class act, exposure to mediums and influences are abundant in city places.
With penetration of computers, internet, CD forms of learning being made available, I could now a visible yet slow shift that is beginning to settle the score of knowledge at same level. What games would then be played is an eventual guess.
Your guesses please.
Have been meaning to write my tuppence worth for a long time now but somehow kept getting side-tracked...
ReplyDeleteThe post title captures the theme of e-learning being the great leveller. And this is a firm belief I have had to...Web itself is a great leveller--killing distance, connecting people, and most importantly, making information available to all.
Anyone with an access to the Internet can find out about anything and everything. Knowledge is no longer the domain of the "privileged."
Similarly, e-learning with its wide reach has a huge potential to take knowledge/learning to the masses. For this, e-learning needs to truly step beyond the corporate domain. Yes, there are schools and unis transferring their courses to the e-learning medium. But this has to be a more widespread govt-supported effort.
Maybe, Open Unis could launch courses for the masses. Courses teaching skills that we know the masses in India would like to learn, benefit from and apply to earn a living...
What happens remains to be seen. But the topic you have raised is pertinent and should be voiced by the academia more often, more vociferously...