Evolving Collaborative Interaction

The growing of Web 2.0 technologies has help us to communicate and interact with people that because of physical separation otherwise we would never meet. Programs such as Skype, Google Groups and Google Docs allow collaborative interaction, people can share information and even work in the same document without having multiple copies of it. I recommend the video “Google Docs in Plain English” which explains how current technologies (Google Doc for example) have evolve allowing more effective collaborations. There are services such as Elluminatewhere one can use Interactive whiteboard and share ideas. I believe the technology has evolved. What needs also to evolve is the people that can use this technology. The corporate world I believe is the one that has benefited most from it. Multiple companies have offices in different states and even in different countries. Having this type of technology shortens distances and reduces many travel and phone expenses.

In the educational system there are still many limitations that make this technology only available to a limited privileged group. People social and economically deprived, many ethnic minorities, groups suffering from social exclusion and geographically remote cannot use this amazing tools. Even in schools where the technology is available we still have the problem of teacher knowledge and narrow experience, group size and time constrains that limit the use of this type of technology.

The technology has evolved to allow us to collaborate however, we need to make room in the educational system in order to participate all of this collaboration.

Theories and Paradigms of Distance Education

Distance education is intimately related to interactions (Aderson, 2008). For Anderson (2008) these interactions are between the components of the educational experiences, which are the teacher, learners, content, context and external environments. In addition we need to consider the fact that face-to-face education cannot be transported to an online environment without adjusting many aspects of it to the new learning experience. For Simonson (2008) what distance education must achieve is equivalence with the face-to-face learning expectation.



In order to achieve this Simonson equivalence we need to considerer the value and importance of creating learning communities that effectively support its member’s interactions. Current technologies available through Web 2.0 networks present a huge variety of options to achieve these fundamental necessities in distance education. Learning platforms for content sharing and interactions such as Moodle, multimedia web hosts such as Youtube or communication software such as Skype are just a few of these resources.


References:

Anderson, T. (Ed.). (2008). The theory and practice of online learning (2nd ed.). Edmonton, AB: Athabasca University Press.

Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zuvacek, S. (2008). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (4th ed., chapters 1 and 2).