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This assignment answers the following question – - Research and review how modern network technologies and techniques are enabling the emergence of educational technology, both mobile and static, for distance learning across the globe. Your task is to produce a report and a presentation defining the technologies, present and emerging, the advantages and limitations of these, and how they support these different methods of delivering education. The bias of your report should be on the theoretical and technological aspects of the area, with a lesser consideration to the business pressures to do so. Your work must be fully referenced and consider the arguments for and against the available technologies.
Description
The students enrolled at distance learning programmes also called the mobile learning community is a very young one, only 10 years old and spread very unevenly across the globe (Traxler, 2010). However, in the last 10 years, it has rapidly grown and has had a considerable amount of influence on mainstream education. The reasons for the development of the field can be attributed to a number of factors. Increasing number of students around the world are working full time while expressing a desire to continue education in their field of interest (Lei & Govra, 2010). This has created a demand for distance education initiatives among universities especially of higher education. Even those universities that do not use technology extensively provide distance education programmes to satisfy this need. Another important reason for students across the world to choose universities of their choice in different countries is the increased cooperation between the various countries supported by activities of the United Nations. Another important development or ser of developments that have increased the trend of distance education is the academic theory supporting a learner centred theory of education rather than a teacher – centric one (Polly & Hannafin, 2010). This is bound to have implications beyond the distance education sector converging onto mainstream education. However, the single most important factor in the rapid development of the distance education sector can be attributed to easily accessible and cost effective technological advancements such as the internet and mobile phones that have dictated the direction of the field. Therefore, in the below sections, we look at some of the main technologies and the resulting products that have heavily influenced distance education and also look at some of their advantages and drawbacks.
