Moulay Ismail UniversityFaculty Of Letters And

HumanitiesEnglish Department

Master program Communication in contexts

Computer Skills For Research

The Use of the Internet and Distance Learning

Presented by: Reda Lamtiri and Rajae BerkaneReda_lamtiri@hotmail.com

Outline:

A brief introduction to the internet. The close connectedness between the internet and

distance learning. The internet and the learning environment. Communication devices and softwares used in

distance learning. Digital media. Adventages and drawbacks of distance learning.

Give a man a fish, and you will feed him for one day, teach a man how to fish, and you

will feed him for a lifetime. (Chinese proverb)

Give a student a language course, and you teach him for a semester. Teach a student to become a technology-assisted language

learner, and you will teach him for a lifetime. (Gary Cziko, 2005)

What is the internet?

The internet is a network of networks, and a very large Wide Area Network (WAN) joining many government,

university and private computers together and providing an infrastructure for the use of E-mail, bulletin boards,

file archives, hypertext documents, databases and other computational forms.

It is also The vast collection of computer networks which form and act as a single huge network for transport of

data and messages across distances which can be anywhere from the same office to anywhere in the world.

The close connectedness between the internet and D-learning.

The internet technology provides individuals strong opportunities to foster their learning process with updated courses, consequently increasing their

skills to better integrate the international job market. New internet technology promises a revolutionary

instructional system full of facilities for both students and teachers. In fact, many countries are very concerned with some technology attributes to promote a qualitative learning and teaching

environment and a shining educational future.

The internet and the learning environment

As the cost of the internet decreases and the availability of technological equipments increases, many universities worldwide have shifted from the traditional to the modern way of teaching. As a matter of fact, this shift has reshaped root and branch the history of education. The internet has become an increasingly important feature of the learning environment for students; many

surveys have proved the use of the internet as an essential study aid outside and inside the classroom. Furthermore, students used to undertake their studies

the traditional way, depending on handwriting and taking notes from the blackboard on which courses were written

by chalk, adding many other conventional ways and activities that were time consuming (ex: reading or

listening in overcrowded classes), which rendered both teachers and students tired and unfocused.

The internet hasn’t only facilitated the educational

process, but has also brought the world into the classroom. Students have become more open to

different resources from different cultural aspects, they have also become aware of

cultural differences, yet the internet has helped them efficiently to reduce cultural

misunderstandings.

Communication devices and softwares used in distance

learning Another important attribute is the availability of

communication devices. Numerous communication devices are existing and

performing very well, the most common ones are cellphones, laptops… and new inventions are

occurring day by day in a generation called: “the finger generation”

The biggest internet invention will be soon unveiled with the launch of software which could put giant search engines like “Google” in the shade! The

new system is called “Wolfram Alpha”. This system is a global store of information under

development which understands and responds to ordinary language the same way a person does.

“Wolfram Alpha” is considered as a new paradigm for using computers and the web;

some computer experts have even compared WA as an emerging artificial intelligence and a

big step towards a self-organizing internet. WA could also be used in mobile devices like iphone under the latest wireless internet service

i-mode (i-mode refers to “I am faster than WAP”).

Distance learning softwares are the code behind the processes that everyone uses to participate in

an online educational environment. While we simply sign in and post assignments,

communicate with professors, take exams, and receive our results, none of these things happen without the integration of very complex distance learning softwares. There are the simple distance

learning software programs that are used in Literature subjects, but there are also very

graphically and interactively complex distance learning software programs which work with

some complicated subjects such as Computer Science, Physics and Mathematics.

Some distance learning softwares

Digital media Digital media and the new communication devices are very crucial

for both teachers and students. Thanks to digital media and computers that teachers and students can store, transmit, and

receive endless digitized information. Digital media is often referred to as electronic media which work on

digital codes based on the numeral system; it goes hand in glove with the communication machines like computers. Computers are

digital machines because at their most basic level they can distinguish between just two values, 0 and 1, or off and on. There is

no simple to represent all the values in between, such as 0.25. All data that a computer processes must be encoded digitally, as a series of zeroes and ones. This way communication devices can

store, send and receive endless resources of information and then the receiver has only to enable his machine to encode the sent

information. Here are the most common examples of digital media: E-books E-journals E-learning…

Resources:

http://math.agnesscott.edu/mathdept/softtabl.htm

www.visionael.com/services/glossary/