Comparisons and advocacy

Hi Mari

Is that your next course work?

Please publish the final work for all of us to learn. This will set a record for the most efficient course work in history. You have spent full three minutes in the moodle.org forums, I noticed!

Hi Mari, please don't misunderstand me, but the questions you are asking are somewhat nebulous in terms of Moodle. 

I suggest:

1. Read the posts in this forum. These are likely the best posts to get an overall feel for what eLearning is about, where it is going, what people expect from it and so on. 

2. Go to the Teaching with Moodle Forum to see what the pedagogical uses of Moodle are. How do teachers use it? 

3. Have a look at Susan Greenfield's work on the impact of technology on cognitive development. 

I think these are good places from which start your investigations, to refine your questions. You don't have to make comments or replies in your reading, but you will find a rich source of materials about the how and the what of using electronic tools. 

I say "tools" as computers, devices, are tools, just like the pencil and paper were when chalk and slates were replaced. They do not replace the learning, just offer a myriad of opportunities to develop alternate sources of information and a range of methodologies for demonstrating that learning. 

As for the social implications of elearning, you really only have to go to any gathering of students these days, almost anywhere in the world and look to see how many are using their smartphones and not really engaging with their "friends".  How many times do I walk through a mall and see a group of students coming in the opposite direction together, but they are all on Facebook or Twitter or Snapchat or playing a game. They are simply not talking, not taking in their environment, drifting through the place like detached abstracts rather than as young people. This is a social phenomenon, albeit somewhat disturbing, and I have no crystal ball to see what the implications of these things are, but I doubt it will be good. 

In the end, Moodle is about learning, education if you will. That education does not stop when the laptop is closed or device is shut down and that is the strength of elearning - can't stop people from thinking, once they get started of course .

As an aside, please let us know where you are from. There are Moodlers all over the world, and you might have one living and working in your street. Perhaps direct contact with such a person will be helpful, or there will be a Moodlemoot near you that you could attend and talk to lots of people, including the developers of Moodle. If you get lucky, you might even get to talk to the Lead Developer, Martin, who is a seriously intelligent and really switched on elearner and educator. He always intimidates me, but he is really a nice and very approachable person and I always get something from him that makes me think about the world in a slightly different way, every time I talk to him. Good luck.