Conceptualizing e-Learning

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores the phenomena which called e-learning ecologies. It explores transformations in the patterns of pedagogy that accompany e-learning, or the use of computing devices to mediate or supplement the relationships between learners and teachers, to present and assess learnable content, to provide spaces where students do their work, and to mediate peer-to-peer interactions. The book also explores seven "new learning" affordances opened up by digital media: ubiquitous learning, active knowledge production, multimodal knowledge representations, recursive feedback, collaborative intelligence, metacognitive reflection, and differentiated learning. It also introduces a whole lot of technology into schools and nothing will change in institutional or epistemic senses. E-Learning environments fall into two categories: new institutional sites of learning and traditional sites of learning that are being transformed by educational technologies. In both new and traditional sites of learning, a range of new educational technologies is emerging.