Reflection on analysis of the terminology used in the field of virtual learning

 

 Main topic of the paper that I am going to reflect upon is analysis of the terminology used in the field of virtual learning. Writer of this paper Alla Anohina analyzes simple consepts about both technology and education in an illustrative way and allows the reader to create a solid view about virtual learning on their mind. And also explains the differences between the types of virtual learning, mainly according to their terminology. After reading this paper I gained a more concrete view on virtual learning. Also I believe that I am now able to call the differences between the methods of virtual learning types and explain them in a broader way according to the terminology used.

 One of the Important issues that occur while explaining the virtual learning and its variety of methods is that the word education usually makes people think of a school and a teacher, but as the writer says, with the improving technology neither school or teacher are going to be indispensable. But I think they already are not.

 In time different researchers used different terms for referencing technology and education together, which created a pool of many different terms which differed from each other slightly. In the end writer chooses the term “Virtual Learning” as an umbrella term for all the other terms described in the paper. I think the word “Virtual” captures the true meaning in a great aspect and feel a lot whole than most of the other used terms. The writer also talks about the offered terms being vague, and this causing the newcomers to the virtual learning area to have a lot of similiar questions about the terminology used.

 By the writer it was noted that the terms describing technologies that support the learning process consists of two part; First part appears in two forms first form is “a word characterising learning + an educational concept” and the second form is “a technology describing word + a connective + an educational concept”, second part is usually common for most of the terms, it is generally a pedagocial term like; education, learning, teaching. Use connectives are also important, they help to explain the role of the technology being used.

 I believe that the process of breaking up the terms helps a lot to be able to examine the terminology used and better understand them. This process is done by the researchers in every part of the research and we can clearly see it. It is written that the first part indicates the differences among the terms and thanks to that we can form 8 basic groups for the widespread used words. This allows us to better examine them one by one, which in the end gave me a better understanding of not just the words used, but also in virtual learning.

 For conclusion I think that it is important and also neccesary to examine the relationships among the terms to truly understand a topic, whether it is related to our subject or not.

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