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 The success of e-learning programs to date has depended upon the capacity of school administrators, teachers, parents, education businesses, and policy leaders to collaborate effectively. And scaling the success of these programs will require diverse groups to work together ever more closely. Today, e-learning companies work side by side with teachers, students, and parents to bring a richer educational experience to the classroom.
To the extent that these collaborations succeed, they promise to simultaneously connect learners, educators, and the community on a global scale. In doing so, they force us to rethink the purpose and architecture of our educational infrastructures in very fundamental ways. While e-learning will not replace the classroom, it has the potential to change the purpose and function of the classroom considerably, because e-learning offers us new ways to think about designing and delivering education not just between the ages of 5 and 18, but across a lifetime.
Connectivity, content, community - These are the buzzwords of the new education landscape. Today, social, technological, and economic drivers are transforming our systems of learning. As human capital becomes the chief source of economic value, education and training become lifelong endeavours for the majority of workers. E-learning offers us potentially less expensive, more convenient, and richer ways of becoming educated, and of coming into contact with more diverse groups of fellow learners than ever before.
The capacity for e-learning to make a really significant contribution to our education programs, however, remains uncertain. There are many challenges to be faced if e-learning initiatives are to realize their full potential. In the United States, surveys show that the vast majority of teachers feel
under-prepared to use technology in the classroom. Many classrooms are still without Internet connections, and the benefits of e-learning, therefore, remain largely inaccessible for large numbers of students.
There are also significant costs associated with keeping school computers and network infrastructures up to date - and these products and services will have to become more affordable, perhaps through options for leasing rather than purchasing, if schools are going to keep up with and benefit from the most recent technological innovations. Surrounding all these issues is the much broader challenge of providing equitable e-learning opportunities across communities - wealthy and poor alike.
 Certainly, these challenges will not be overcome without much effort, but there are many reasons for working to overcome them. E-learning represents a long-term opportunity for us to rethink the value of education over a lifetime. As such, it can help us more effectively develop the "knowledge workers" required to sustain the growth of the new economy. Moreover, because of the mobility that is characteristic of e-learning, it can become embedded in many daily activities, and this has the potential to reshape our understanding of the time and place for learning in our lives.
Because e-learning represents a powerful convergence of technological opportunity and economic necessity, its emergence presents a unique occasion to undertake a considered re-evaluation of the role and function of education over the course of a lifetime. We can realize the potential for e-learning to substantially improve and expand the learning opportunities for children. The work accomplished so far suggests that e-learning can play a substantive role in developing a new breed of literate citizens for the global economy of the 21st century.
Courtesy: Peter J. Stokes
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