I worry about one of the new approaches becoming the entrenched standard and seeing some people get left out due to their learning style. That doesn't have to happen, but it seems to be the way public education works. In college I would try to find an online version of whatever class I was taking's lectures. I could usually find a good lecture by a professor from one of the best schools in the land, sometimes I could find a lecture from the author of my text book. If I had to rank what I learned the most from it would look like this. 1. The internet. Get 7 different versions of the same concept in the time it takes to listen to a lecture. 2. In class Lecture, discussion with friends. 3. Text book. I've had so many classes where I wouldn't have even opened the damn things up if there was a problem or data set I needed. Not all are bad, probably about 40% have been rendered totally useless by the internet.
There is no doubt that learning with internet related content is more effective than classroom lectures. Most people actually don't listen during a lecture. I found that I took notes to help me pay attention. Without taking notes I would have just zoned out or fell asleep.
I don't know about that. I am a believer in the multiple intelligences theory in education, there are different ways of learning and thinking about information that is presented, the intelligences if you will. Some students are much better suited to learning through internet related content. Other students need an instructor there to ask questions throughout the process. Some students need to be able to use hands-on methods to learn the subject matter, others can just read the textbook and figure it out on their own. We all have different learning styles. I personally do learn well from audio and video sources, I had a professor this semester who was terrible at learning from lecture, audio, or video, he needed to have it written down so that he could read it and refer to it later. I think that internet resources are a great thing to use in the classroom. Music education (my field) has been greatly enhanced by new resources available through the internet. I do not think, however, that an education system based entirely on internet related content would be any more effective than our current system, because neither effectively addresses multiple learning styles consistently.
I really wouldn't say that. I have had classes with great lectures that involved lots of debate and participation from students, such classes and lecturers definitely deliver something that can't be had from the internet. There is value all over, which is why I'm scared of anyone thing becoming dominate. Things are probably better now in some ways then they will be in the internet hegemonic learning system, but overall internet learning will probably be better.