I can easily send and receive 30+ emails every working day. But outside of the dreaded bills, I would say I have probably only received 30 handwritten letters in my entire lifetime!
No longer do I have to go into a card shop to pick a birthday card from a limited selection, I can now personalise one online and get it delivered straight to the recipiant without even having to put a pen to paper.
I lived in Sri Lanka for 6 months and I don’t know how I would have survived without emails. An email home can be sent and I’d have a reply within an hour with the latest news – I remember skyping my parents and informing them of some “home” news before they had even heard, yet I was 5500 miles away! But do you know what I loved? The days the postman arrived, rang the bell and handed me a letter addressed to me. Holding something physical and reading the handwriting of someone you missed thousands of miles away, felt like the closest thing to a hug from them (cheesy but true). There was a place for email and there was a place for snail mail during this time.
So just like all the other “E’s”, learning has entered the virtual, electronic world. No longer do we need to co-ordinate the diaries of 50 people to pass on the latest information, instead a podcast can be recorded for the 50 people to listen at their own convenience within a 5 day period.
BUT….Just as there still is a place for a handwritten letter, birthday card and going into a bank, there still is a place for a face to face learning experience. And just as there is a place for sending an email, ecard or using ebanking, there is also a place for elearning. Used together and in the right way, they can only complement each other.
The purpose of this blog is for me to reflect on elearning and all that it means as I journey though the Open University module “The Elearning Professional”. I have deliberately put “The Elearning Professional” in quotation marks, as that is the first thing to ponder….is there such a thing and if so, what is it?
We have recently move house and my daughter, who is ten, is happily writing letters by hand to her old friends. She and her friends are happy to do this because they love getting letters so much. The handwritten letter will not completely die for a little while yet.
ReplyDeleteLOL!! Last month I skyped my mum to see if she'd heard anything about the riots up the road from home, which I'd been following on the internet. Until my call, she was blissflly unaware anything was up!
ReplyDelete