Real Global Online Collaborative Learning still a stone through away

As we have seen in our readings, chats and discussions, emerging technologies cannot be wished away in the present ever changing world and especially classrooms, but all the forces we know of embrace it eg social forces and economic forces. For the children who want to get a good education, they have to keep up with the new technologies like tweeter, blogging, IM, chats even texting, and not give in. With texting though, once they get of age to have cell phones the gadget stays in their hands constantly and so it comes easily. Here is a twist about  Text Messages

But what I can see and I have to say that this is just a layman retorting and not a research finding at all, is that although there will be more than enough end point user hardware around the world, there might be difficulties when it comes to connectivity. As we have seen in our readings (Web 2.0 and Disrupting Class text), some countries are far ahead when it comes to connectivity of the World Wide Web but none of them has riched the perfect level (100%). So this will always be hindrances as far as online learning and especially due to the financial, technical and logistical difficulties attached to it. For the majority of the countries finance is a problem, especially most of third world countries. We have to bear in mind that it is not collaborative learning until we hear from everybody in different parts of the world. At the same time, I believe that every country is doing its very best for their citizens to be connected and be part of this great experience and even better become global citizens.

Putting that aside, my take for a good education is not just mastering the lectures and readings provided by the teacher but also relating the lectures and readings to the real world events. For example, apart from just listening to news and getting satisfied by what you have heard, an educated individual will try getting other views from other sources using the internet, texting friends to know what they think and so on. Paulo Barsio explains this better here .

Social networks have grown very rapidly and they offer fast ways to organize things like get together, sharing, lazar fast communication and meetings as they collaborate. Such are the functionalities that I think kids will benefit from but by using them for educational purposes other than just socializing. See this  Computer Games Another way that student can learn better is using online based computer games. This is well explained here www.selfgrowth.com/articles/10_Benefits_Of_Video_Games.html