Learning is in the air

A classroom in the cloud sounds like the stuff of fantasy but for students and staff at TAFE New England Institute, the concept is only weeks away from becoming reality.

Photo: Brisbane Times

For the past six months, teachers at NEI have been working on what they hope will become a learning tool of the future and could change the way students learn around the world.

Taking advantage of the opportunities afforded by access to high-speed broadband, the Cloud 9 project aims to create a ''classroom in the cloud'', encompassing at least nine different technologies to provide a collaborative, experiential and self-motivated learning environment.

In practical terms, it will mean that teachers and students will be able to log on to full classroom resources from anywhere, says the acting learning and assessment development co-ordinator with TAFE NEI, teacher Lyn Graham.
Graham says TAFE NEI has already had a couple of trials using the cloud-based technologies and the response from facilitators and students has been positive.

''We have used Coach's Eye technology in an aged-care class on correct manual handling methods,'' she says. ''Students could log on and not just get shown the correct way to do things, but also then be told, via a video-conferencing technology, what they were doing wrong when they tried the techniques.

''The technologies and their applications to the Cloud 9 classroom are so dynamic, and it is even possible, with the mobile applications, that students will soon be able to do their learning on their smartphones as well.''
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Related link
http://cloud9.neitwiki.wikispaces.net/

Source: Brisbane Times