Just a little more.

I think that as I write for this blog I'll devote each post to a very specific idea, hopefully keeping my thoughts a little more cohesive. Now that I've finished my first year of college the thing that is most clear to me is that the time I spend online for school is very one-sided, that is, there is almost no interactivity. If I have to login to my Portal (Poly's online network) than it is typically just to check for email from a professor, see if test grades or posted or start planning a schedule for the upcoming quarter.

I wouldn't consider Poly's system bad, everything I have ever needed to do online has worked quite well, however, I would definitely consider it under used. Friends of mine in the College of Engineering are participating in online discussion groups about projects, taking online quizzes that provide instant feedback and submitting assignments digitally. Many of these professors have a highly technical background and can manage the content and information necessary to make this happen. Over in the College of Liberal Arts the situation is quite different, I rarely find more than grades.

To sum things up, instances such as this call for software intended for educators not to necessarily substitute classroom content but to facilitate online communication with students. Some professors, though highly skilled in a particular field, may not have extensive computer skills or may have too heavy a workload to manage physical and virtual classrooms. Mass market online communities like Facebook and MySpace posses some of the necessary qualities: they are very easy to use, allow a wealth of media to be easily shared among a group of people and allow easy communication between large groups. If a product could be produced that takes some of these qualities but tailors them to education, distributing Word documents and Keynote/Powerpoint slides, Flash tutorials, etc., then studying for an exam of collaborating with other students could change radically and lead to increased productivity for both students and professors.