Social Networking brings the Fun Element into Education for New Age Learners

People consider education to be a serious aspect of life and this is where they make the biggest blunder. Probably, it’s the key reason why the brick and mortar classrooms today have taken nightmarish forms for numerous students who rather prefer playing with technology for achieving success in the field of education. It’s sad that there are many teachers who are still under the impression that education comes only through books and blackboards. What they fail to realise is that the social networking tools can bring a splendid difference in one’s study habits which will consequently make one a better learner than others.

The Principal of the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, Chris Lehmann said that it’s really disgusting that many schools put little emphasis on computers and more on their glorified workbooks. He rather suggested that teachers must now start adopting networking skills so that they can utilise them for improving the educational standards of their students.

Teachers must look beyond this Networking model.
(Image source: twitterforeducation.wikispaces.com)

Teachers must adopt networking skills

The dependency for books has been probably one of the biggest drawbacks in schools that have actually hindered students from acquiring interest towards pursuing education with pleasure. Rather, students should adapt themselves in making use of the social networking tools to not only study but exhibit their ability to update themselves with time.

Image Courtesy : prosofteng.com

So, how exactly must teachers and students use social media for making education more effective?

• Open up accounts – There are certain bookmarking sites where a teacher can open up accounts for students so that the latter can preserve, systemise and even share links. Besides, they can also view links of others and even browse to find what others have posted. In this way, teachers can keep their students engaged and make them learn in an innovative manner.
  
• Enter interactive forums – The modern world calls it ‘chatting’ which a teacher can now do with his/her students and vice versa through interactive forums online. What stands beneficial here is that those who are reticent can feel confident in communicating with their educators, and this is where online learning stands out of the crowd.
  
  

  

  Source: cognitivedesignsolutions.com

• Classroom presentations – Presentation work wonders for students, whether they are taking classes online or offline. Often, you fall short of words while explaining a specific lesson to an entire class. A nice PowerPoint presentation would instead say everything with the help of images, texts and animations thereby making students grasp the lessons with supreme interest.
  
• Social networking sites – Believe it or not, social networking sites can help you educate in a fun-loving manner. It’s just like how you love communicating with your friends, sharing updates with them, posting images and videos etc. Similarly, both students and teachers can make use of sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn and get all these activities done to keep themselves updated.

Well, more and more technological developments are getting implemented into schools, colleges and universities where the educators are now getting into the trend of teaching their students through podcasting, file swapping, tagging and blogging. Social media experts have in fact said that a time will come when students will carry no bags full of books and will instead be asked by their teachers to bring nothing except their laptops.

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Better be late than never should be your Motto in Seeking Studies through Online at any Age

Today, the tendency is to get quickly in jobs at an early age. In the rush, many fail to complete studies and end up with ordinary job profiles.  They feel the urge of seeking higher studies at a later age when they realise that a mere school level pass out degree cannot fetch coveted job profiles. But then it is too late to enrol with students too young to their age. This is what triggers the importance of online education that comes as a saviour to help them continue studies without feeling the embarrassment of age.

Online, the most useful Medium

Those with an intention to complete education at any point of their lives to upgrade their career can always go the online way. Many might be school pass outs without a concrete degree. At this point, we suggest a bachelor’s degree that serves your option the best. It is the qualification required to enhance knowledge to apply for a secured job.

Graduation (Photo credit: uonottingham)

Here, is why we suggest a graduation degree?

Achieving a graduation or bachelor’s degree proves a real investment for your future and great career opportunities. A person with a minimum level certificate with basic position in service finds a bachelor’s degree to be a potential investment for future career. It not just opens great career opportunities but improves job prospects. In this regard, we advice that if the discussion has convinced you to opt for graduation courses then go and choose a UK university accredited online institution. It is one of the most recognised universities offering authentic and validated courses that have actually enabled thousands of students to take the courses.

Studying a bachelor degree online has never been more accessible with significant developments in distance learning over the past decade. Increasing costs for campus-based students combined with advances in online technology have created an increase in demand for UK university undergraduate courses studied online.

Options for you to seek graduation Courses

·         Business

·         Management

·         Psychology

·         Law

·         HRM

·         Finance and Accounting

·         Tourism and Hospitality

·         Sales and Marketing

·         IT and much more.

Now that we have discussed that age should not be barrier in seeking graduation level courses through online medium have a read to learn about these great personalities who completed graduation at a later life, but it served them best.

 Real Life Examples

Mark Zuckerberg (Photo credit: jdlasica)

Mark Zuckerberg is a fine reflection of how to continue studies later in life if not completed on time for fortifying career options. He is a renowned computer programmer who founded the Facebook, the most popular social networking site. At a later age, he attended college to major in the subject area computer science and psychology. He went on to become a billion dollar owner at a young age.

Cover of Alan Rickman

Alan Rickman had a fine future prospect with graphic design business with an art degree. But then he met his twist of fate that somehow convinced him to leave his profitable business and take up acting. For this, he went to Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts where he studied in acting. He choice of taking up acting reached him to high notches of success.

The above are instances that throw light on how education can be achieved during any part of life, despite what your age spells. Thus, with encouragement from real life stories, you should go ahead with a career and if you need to take higher studies like graduation degree in a prospective field. Though late than never, enjoy the milestone in career with taste of success.

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Reddit is the Next Step towards Modern Education

Reddit, the “front page of the internet”, as tagged by them, is an open education forum where the visitors can gather knowledge about diverse subjects. The users, who are known as the redditors, write about different topics and also create sub-reddits. They have formed UReddit as well, which is basically known as the University of Reddits.

Image via CrunchBase

In the UReddit section of this particular social networking site, the students can learn about various issues of their interests but there are no trained professors to teach them. This is an open forum and therefore anyone is eligible to teach a subject to anybody who is interested in learning that. This feature of Reddit makes it totally different from the MOOCs, i.e. the Massive Open Online Courses, where the subjects are taught by conventional professors.

Blooming Popularity of Reddit

Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian with the Reddit Alien (Photo credit: Anirudh Koul)

The founders of Reddit, Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, tried to go against the standards of higher education. Reddit is a platform where the students are eligible to learn and know about anything which grabs their attention and makes them excited. However, this is seldom possible in the schools or colleges where we need to learn things we do not like. This idea behind the site excelled in grabbing the attention of almost 75,000 people who have already registered to this site for over 100 different courses.

Although Reddit has nothing to do with the traditional professors, still due to so much of hype about the website, Dr. Philip Bishop, one of the professors of University of South Florida, could see something relevant out of this. He, therefore, have started his web-only classes on UReddit for his freshmen students. With the help of this website, he shares videos and various discussion forums with the students.

Due to the budding popularity of the site, two of the pioneers of Reddit, Anastas Stoyanovsky and Elliot Volkman, have already launched a kick starter campaign in order to raise funds for the development of the website. This way they intend to help the students by providing them with searchable transcripts, and have also termed their project as an ‘open compass’ which is absolutely different from edX and Coursera.

Professor Bishop, along with his colleague Mr. K. Edward Renner, believes that this open forum of learning and teaching is nonetheless a great step towards education. However, the only drawback, according to them, is the fact that it is quite impossible to track the number of students visiting the site and also because the site includes discussions and topics about video games, like StarCraft, it is lacking in credibility.

Whatever might be the case, Reddit has undoubtedly shown a different genre of education to the society and also there is no denying of the fact that in the near future, it will come up as a paragon of modern education system.

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Education acts as the Instrumental Force behind Children’s Health and Nutrition

Parents’ income and education is indirectly proportional to children’s health. A study published in the March issue of journal Public Health Nutrition reveals that parenting behaviour is highly influenced by educational background. In this context, education influences behaviours and beliefs, which bring direct impact on nurturing and bringing up a child.

A Look at a Research Report of Recent Times

A wide research was conducted in eight European countries for 15,000 children aged between 2 and 9 to realise the connection between children’s nutrition and parents’ education level. The survey further detailed that those children of parents subjected to very low or medium levels of education depended on low quality and quantity of diet. They are of the tendency to feed their children with more sweet drinks and processed foods.

Image: JonesAlexandra Wordpress Blog

On the contrary, parents with high level of education are more likely to give their children foods that contain high nutritional value like pasta, rice, vegetables, fruits and also whole-grain bread. The research was conducted in countries like Cyprus, Belgium, Germany, Estonia, Hungary, Italy, Spain, Sweden and others.

What Experts have to say to this Report?

Juan Miguel Fernandez Alvira, belonging from the University of Zaragoza in Spain had a serious take on that. According to him, families with varied level of education brought varying influence on consumption of foods like vegetables, fruits and sweet drinks. While he explained his research on impact of education on food consumption in a Plataforma SINC news release, his speech worked as an eye-opener to millions of people from across the globe how education is significant in influencing eating habits.

The report nipped the fact that lower education kept parents at backstage and children from such families are more likely to fall prey to obesity or malnutrition. Children of such families either suffer from overweight or malnutrition leading to health problems. Parents are hardly aware of the severity of such situations due to lack of knowledge and so they let their children grow on high-fat and low-nutrient foods.

So, what initiatives can parents really take to monitor children’s diet for healthy results? The answer to that would be accessing further education on nutrition.

Online, the Best Source for Further Education

The internet is the best chosen medium by millions of parents at middle age to access more knowledge on nutrition so as to tackle children and education, simultaneously. These are online institutions accredited by State University so as to cater career-enhancing tips, literature and advice. The idea is to progress one’s professional and personal goals with proper achievement on health and education. The best part is online study offers a spree of advantages like great value for money and abounding flexibility.  You can get information on such Health and Social Care course here. The greatest advantage of these courses is that parents can study at their own pace, look after their children and enhance knowledge on nutrition.  After qualifying they can even be a professional Nutrition consultant as well.

Thus, education for parents enhances their knowledge to help children with proper and adequate nutritional diet for a better and brighter future.

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Gamifying Learning is the new way to Attract Students

There have already been many discussions about how to improve the educational system and make the students more inclined towards their books but nothing seems to have helped much. However, some of the HR and training institutions have introduced gamification as a new tool to interact and teach people. They are of the view that it is a great way to engage people and make them know about different things in a fun way. The educators shouldn’t, however, be the last one to include this in their day to day teaching. This way, both the teachers and the parents will be able to prepare the educational syllabus of their respective students and children so that they feel excited about carrying on with their courses.

Gamification in the Previous Years

Image : Amazon

The educational program of Fizz and Martina’s Math Adventures was loved by the students about 10 years ago. It became immensely popular amongst the school students who were found to be absolutely engaged in solving their problems which were posed to them during the show and at times they even wanted to continue with the same during recess period.

Students were seen to be working as a group and also through constant interactions with each other. This is indeed a great way to learn things without feeling weary of the subject. The students were even asked by their teachers to reason out how they solved their respective problems and the students absolutely loved it.

Gamify the Classrooms and Reward the Students

Recently, a lot has been brewing up about the gamification of education. It is nothing but presenting the contents in a game-like situation in order to attract the learners and motivate them to do something innovative with the given topic. However, this should not just be a fashion in the arena of education and the educators should think positively about slipping in the same in their education system as early as possible.

How popular game Angry Birds can make students do the Math with more Interest

Let me give you an example showing how gamification of education might help the children to learn better. For example, if the teachers are constantly forcing the students to do well in mathematics because in future it will help them to be an engineer and design different equipments, including bikes and cars, then why not demonstrate them the importance of the subject by showing them a video of car or bike making and designing so that they can learn it in a better way? This way not only the students will be thoroughly engaged to the video but they will also be able to learn about the intricacies of the given subject, and in turn will be able to fetch good marks for the same as well.

So, why not take a bit of risk and give a wake-up call to our education system? Why not try and do something new by which we will be able to improve the overall results of the students? Gamification of education needs to be done by one and all and therefore by the help of it, a student will be able to learn a thing in much better and improved manner

Cloud Computing shows Students an Effective Way to Study Online

Can ‘Education’ and ‘Cloud Computing’ go hand in hand? Does it not sound a bit ambiguous? To be honest, it isn't  Cloud computing refers to the practice of utilising a network of remote servers that is hosted on the Internet which helps you to preserve, supervise and even process data. In reality, cloud computing in reality is associated with the industrial sector where the use of computers is considered mandatory.

However, it’s true that computers have stepped in almost every field, and education indubitably is one among them. Whether you talk about handling minor jobs or pursuing higher education, it’s indeed difficult to proceed without depending on this electronic digital device.

English: Diagram showing overview of cloud computing including Google, Salesforce, Amazon, Axios Systems, Microsoft, Yahoo & Zoho (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Cloud Computing – a successful strategy for online learners

With the grand arrival of computers, the concept of cloud computing has witnessed worldwide popularity. Talking about education, millions of students have grabbed the opportunity to collaborate with one another establishing teamwork and completing assignments with pleasure and perfection. Surveys moreover say that cloud based education has resulted in saving quality time and promoting healthy understanding among students. This is one of the reasons why the percentage of successful online learners is rising year after year.

Online learning creates huge impact in US

In the United States, online learning has become increasingly accessible. In fact, the affordability factor in regard to education has been highly recognised on all levels owing to cloud computing.

The impact has rather been so strong according to the National Center for Education Statistics that two out of three colleges today offer credit courses online where more than twelve million students attend as distance learners. These courses undergo constant scrutiny for not only the in-person experience factor but the ways they allow interpersonal communication among students and teachers.

English: Cloud Computing Image
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Cloud-based Education for new age learners and educators

Cloud computing has brought fruitful results to the field of education. In fact, it has attained global popularity for its practical usage. Today, several educational institutions on the basis of this advanced technology make use of the internet resources to preserve and analyse data. In fact, it’s not students who are extracting all the fruits but the teachers too are making extensive use of the cloud-based technologies to access teaching tools for free.

How Cloud-Computing benefit online learners and academic institutions?

• Online learners are not only able to access but make use of several learning tools free of cost.
• Students get the opportunity to get exposed to a wide sphere owing to the interconnection facility.
• The students will adopt such a learning technique where there will be a mentor available in every process. Hence, they will have the scope to learn with more efficiency.
• Schools, colleges and universities can access real information from anywhere across the world in seconds. This will help a lot of students and teachers to get updated with time.

So, if you are running a school or planning to do higher studies online, you must take help of this outstanding technology since it’s not only going to be effective for all involved in the world of education but also act as a safer initiative for its environmental friendly nature.

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Blended Learning to Set a Refined Trend in Education for Career Enthusiasts

What about adopting a technique that involves the combination of both learning and teaching through face-to-face sessions as well as through online? Yes, it’s none other than blended learning that has emerged to be an exceptional learning trend for all 21^st century learners.

We must not have forgotten the earlier days when students used to read chapters, practice lessons, listen to cassettes and make group discussions in the presence of a teacher in a classroom. Initiating the concept of blended learning now will simply enhance these learning experiences of the new age learners thereby making them proceed to successful career paths with ease and confidence.

Image: Proalpha.com

A survey conducted by a global training provider named Cegos, known for providing professional trainings in the European countries, polled a total of 600 HR directors and about 2800 employees in 6 European countries. The subject of the survey dealt with their development practices and professional trainings. Here a question was raised in regard to the different types of learning methods that can set a trend in the long-run.

A notable increase in making use of blended learning classes was found to go high from 35% to 47% in the United Kingdom. This further showed that a good percentage of employees were extremely glad in receiving such trainings since they were able to utilise the same to their existing workplaces. Today, the success rates for blended learners are no doubt soaring year after year since the training professionals are constantly implementing new blended learning techniques in several schools and colleges with the intention to receive exceptional academic results.

According to studies conducted by blended learning experts, the following provisions if introduced can give rise to a perfect learning ambiance for blended learners:

• All the documents included in a blended learning course module must be provided in electronic format
• Decisive assessments along with constant feedback should be given to students on a daily basis
• The personal development plan-work must be executed in an electronic format
• Every learner must have 24/7 access to all his/her learning contents. In other words, equality must be maintained among students in terms of accessing study materials.
• Students must take advantage of asynchronous collaborative learning which will enhance their face-to-face learning experiences and therefore result in the creation of supporting learning networks.

picture of an e-learning classroom (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Does Blended Learning have a future for career builders?

Four useful aspects were pointed out in respect to blended learning from a recent study. In fact, the following points positively predict that blended learning smells of a bright future for today’s learners:

• Timesaving format: Results show that students who opt for blended learning take 25% less time to receive similar learning outcomes just like traditional learners. Therefore, blended learning is indubitably a time saving format.
  
  
• Moneysaving format – Blended learning lets individuals save a good amount of money in comparison to what is usually spend for traditional learning. In fact, this consequently leads to heightened productivity for all blended learners.
  
  
• No rigidity – It’s really tough for one studying for the entire day in a classroom. In this respect, the blended learners will be able to take their classes online from anywhere they wish.
  
  
• Best for remote employees – Those who have their workplaces spread out at several locations will be able to access contents online with ease. No matter in which remote area one resides, blended learning will make it easier for him/her to learn with absolute flexibility.

So, you see how blended learning has undergone remarkable progress in the field of education and have therefore shown individuals the way to build successful careers from any corner of the world. Well, innovations and implementations are in progress, and a day will come when blended learning will be considered a sole necessity for every individual desiring to achieve thriving careers.

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