Technology: The Good, The Bad, and The Problem.

When it comes to online learning I think it is all about teaching yourself. You can email your professor’s to gain addition information about what you are learning but ultimately it is about teaching yourself. Technology can make it easier but it can also make it harder, being able to have a mass amount of information at your fingertips at any time is a positive, but technology can also make matters worse by not functioning properly. I think the challenge of taking an online English class is that I am only getting feedback through my assignments on how I can improve rather than having a face to face conversation on what I can do. Through technology it can make it hard to understand what the professor is talking about or what they really want, it is hard on the line of communication at times. Technology can help in a way but I think it is more of a problem; it is easy to look up information online rather than reading a book or trying to understand a chapter. For the whole semester I have been glued to my computer working on papers, not only for my English class but for others also, my computer is the one technology that I have used throughout the semester and thus has been the most beneficial. What I liked the most about having a class online was that I was able to do things on my time, along with that I was able to have a flexible schedule since I had to work most days. I also did not have to worry about attending class if I was sick or having to worry about what times I had to be in class, through online learning I was able to set my own time frame. I am not for sure what I will be using in the future since my family is moving here within a month to a new state, and I plan on attending college in person rather than going online. I believe that I am the type of person who would rather be in person than having an online class, to me online learning is a great thing for many people but it is just not for me.  Here is a link that talks about measuring the success of online learning: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/17/measuring-the-success-of-online-education/