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"Walk into any college classroom and you'll probably see students on their devices. Some are taking notes, but most are also simultaneously monitoring multiple social media feeds. Rather than fight this trend as a problem to be solved, the innovative folks at the Georgia Institute of Technology have figured out a way to turn it into an educational opportunity. Thanks to a recent initiative: students at Georgia Tech will earn college credit for their Internet use, automatically."

Abstract Learning 'using' technologies has become a global phenomenon. The Internet is often seen as a value-neutral tool that potentially allows individuals to overcome the constraints of traditional elitist spaces and gain unhindered access to learning. It is widely suggested that online technologies can help address issues of educational equity and social exclusion, and open up democratic and accessible educational opportunities. The national governments and non-governmental agencies who fund educational endeavours in developing countries have advocated the use of new technologies to reduce the cost of reaching and educating large numbers of children and adults who are currently missing out on education. This paper presents an overview of the educational developments in open, distance, and technology-facilitated learning that aim to reach the educationally deprived populations of the world. It reveals the challenges encountered by children and adults in developing countries as they attempt to access available educational opportunities. The discussion questions whether, in face of these challenges, developing nations should continue to invest money, time, and effort into e-learning developments. Can technology-enhanced learning help address the poverty, literacy, social, and political problems in developing countries?

Information technology has been an important part of higher education since the development of the lantern slide in the mid-1800s. However, occasions in which the academy has been transformed by technology are rare. Viewed in a historical perspective, these occasions can be considered as a series of three epochs: the online public-access catalog epoch; the personal computer, Internet, and web epoch; and the enterprise systems (ERP, CMS) epoch. Certainly, developments are continuing, but for most colleges and universities, these three epochs no longer represent technological frontiers. Looking forward, those of us in higher education are now focusing our attention on technology applications for teaching, learning, and research-or what can be viewed as the epochs of teaching and learning with technology, and cyberinfrastructure. In this commentary, I'll be confining my comments to teaching and learning.

With the recent growth of the Internet and other distance technologies, web based course delivery has become an attractive option for expanding the educational opportunities available to students. Our institution, like others, is actively pursuing this means of delivery in order to expand its reach to new students and to facilitate the scheduling of existing students. During a recent academic term, our students had the opportunity to enroll in such a course. Unique circumstances resulted in the simultaneous offering of additional course sections in a traditional lecture/discussion format, as well as a web-enhanced format. This pilot study documents a comparative evaluation of the three course formats.

"NEW YORK - A soldier in Afghanistan learned about the death of Osama bin Laden on Facebook. A TV producer in South Carolina got a tip from comedian Kathy Griffin on Twitter. A blues musician in Denver received an email alert from The New York Times. And a Kansas woman found out as she absently scrolled through the Internet on her smartphone while walking her dog."

18 Oct 2011 Mary Meeker