Session 14—Learning Objects

To be honest, after reading first two articles of the assigned readings, I was still confused about the meaning of “learning object” and the purpose of discussing about it in this course. But after reading a couple more, I found that I always know what the “learning object” is, I just don’t know what it is called. Learning object can be anything used to help people learn something. It could be a picture, video, text, audio, module… anything! I especially LOVE Bonk’s article! I enjoyed reading all the concepts about learning objects in it and amazed that there are so many wonderful resources out there on the Web but I didn’t know at all. Now, I feel so grateful to be a teacher in this age that I could provide my students interesting lessons including resources of all sorts. With the assistance of learning objects, learning doesn’t have to be boring anymore! Meeting students’ different needs and learning styles become much easier than a decade ago. I think the point is “variety!”

Although it is easy to get learning objects on the Web through browsing and downloading, it is still difficult for teachers to first, come up with a lesson plan; second, put useful information from different resources together to present a meaningful lesson; third, provide guidance in a timely manner when needed. Some say that now we have these useful websites promoting self-learning, so we don’t need teachers anymore. I don’t agree with it! I think teachers become more important because they need to integrate all kinds of information into one lesson to make learning as effective as possible. I doubt that any learner would do so for his own learning. After all, there are too many resources to find the perfect ones, even teachers are struggling with them, let alone a individual learner.

Beside, I think that it is good to have so many resources out there, but sometimes it is hard to fit the outside resources into one’s own teaching context. (I don’t know if this is just because I didn’t search for the wonderful sites that Bonk recommended, this is just my own experience.) I can’t help wondering that when facing this kind of situation, should we change our context to use the good resources, or should we made our own learning objects to fit our context? Which is better? Which is more effective? More efficient?

I definitely will go checking those sites mentioned in the articles out! And will try to think the possibility of using the resources into my future teaching when reading them. I think before having any lesson plan in mind, it will be a great chance to see the resources with an open mind so that the exploration may create more possibilities for future instruction.