Technology has been a huge boon for the education industry, both online and off.  We all can readily see how technology has benefited online education -- that’s perfectly obvious, because online classes depend so heavily on the Internet and programming capabilities.  Most online classes these days take place in an online classroom that students sign into, and where they can browse discussion boards, check assignment due dates, send and receive private messages, and even listen to or view audio and video lectures.

 

The role of technology is less obvious in traditional formats, yet it is there!  For instance, really good golf schools use technology that allow students to practice their drive indoors, similar to the flight simulation technology that many flight schools use.

 

Even college libraries benefit greatly from technology -- not only can you browse the library’s collection, place holds, and renew books online, but now you can also read journal articles and view electronic books or “ebooks” via services such as EBSCO and Google Book Search.  Technology therefore is a huge benefit to students at home as well as in school.

 

The best thing is that technology is always advancing.  Just five or ten years ago, no one could have imagined how important and commonplace online education would become.  How will technology continue to benefit education in the next five or ten years?

 

I wanted to extend some advice to other web design students out there who are struggling.  I am a grad student and one of my most difficult courses involves using dreamweaver templates as a website builder.  I focused my site on buying and selling so I utilized the shopping cart function of dreamweaver extensions. While we are graded on the usability and likability of our websites, we are also graded on our method of driving people to look at it.  I studied up on SEO keyword training which I found to be the most beneficial tool for this particular class.  Basically the training teaches you how to link certain keywords that people might type in during a Google search to divert them to your site. 

 

With multiple pages on my website, finding an array of keywords was not a hard task. Another benefit of driving more and more people to your website is that they will be happy to leave you feedback.  On my last project, I added a critiquing extension from dreamweaver that enabled users to tell me what they did or did not like about the site.  From their comments, I made some adjustments which quite possibly raised my grade from a C to an A.  When it comes to website building, the people using it are your best teachers.  Driving more people to your site is the best way you can ensure you are doing everything to make it the best it can be. 

 

 

I live in a really beautiful location. It has decent weather, lots of opportunities for exploring different types of nature and the people here are friendly. I love almost everything about it. However, I don’t live near a warm beach which is the one thing that I lament about the location where I reside.

What I generally do to make up for that is to make sure that I spend at least a portion of every year’s vacation time soaking up the sun in a warm beach destination. This year I’m going to Miami. The trip isn’t for another few months but I’m already getting really excited about it.

I’ll probably be spending a lot of time at the beach there. However, I’m also going to be spending time in some local pools because I’m taking swimming classes in Miami while I’m there. I am a decent swimmer but I think that Miami swimming lessons could really strengthen my ability to swim which will make the trip that much more enjoyable. I figured I could spend the first couple weeks of my vacation studying intensively at one of the swimming schools in Miami and then I could switch my attention to the beach.

Swimming in pools is a lot different from swimming in the ocean. I hope that the skills I learn in swimming class will translate well into playing in the waves. Even if they don’t, though, at least I’ll learn something new while soaking up that terrific Miami sunshine!