How has the internet & e-learning revolutionized the education field?

As we can see the internet has revolutionized enormously the way the people gather information now.  I still remember when in order to do any kind of research or gather some kind of information for a school project you actually had to go inside a library and hope to find a book with the information you were looking for.  It used to be what we could consider now difficult to actually get all the right information or tools necessary to learn a specific subject or field.  Now, with the freedom of accessibility that the internet provides to us and the unlimited information that is uploaded in a daily basis, we are able now to instruct ourselves in all areas.

The internet now gives us all the tools necessary to become self efficient in any areas we want to, without all the expensive fees you had to pay before for just a specific class.  With the abundant E- Learning options and tools available on the internet in today’s environment we are able to become smarter saving time and saving money as well. 

Twelve years ago in April 2001 the MIT president, Charles M. Vest,  president back then, announced that he would give free access to the internet and make all its courses and materials available online to all students.  This idea  enabled teachers and lifelong learners all around the globe to listen and read what was being taught at MIT.  This gave the initiative for several other Universities to put their classes online to the public, five years later, in April 2006, UC Berkeley followed by putting complete academic courses on Apples iTunes U, starting what is now known as the biggest collections recorded classrooms lectures in the world.   A year after that, in October 2007, UC Berkeley launched their classes on YouTube.  "According to Benjamin Hubbard the Manager of Webcast at UC Berkeley, the school has had well over 120 million downloads since first sharing videos online, which they began doing in 2001." (Courtney Boyd Byers, thenextweb.com)

We now have access to almost every single course online, it not only helps us to learn in a faster pace but it also helps us save money and time by doing it.  For example in a personal point of view, I had to be out of the country a couple of times because of work and I was able to keep taking some of my classes online and at the same pace with the same professor at Florida National College.  Not only was I able to keep taking the class, but I was also able to keep in contact with the instructor if I had any questions.  This is one of the many benefits of E-learning, and this is how it has revolutionized and improved the education field by making it easier and sometimes better to learn.

Sources:

http://thenextweb.com/insider/2011/05/14/how-the-internet-is-revolutionizing-education/

http://www.onlineeducation.net/internet-revolutionizing-education

http://www.mentormob.com/learn/i/articles-about-the-21st-century-education/how-internet-is-revolutionizing-and-shaping-the-21st-century-education

http://gettingsmart.com/cms/news/10-infographics-for-learning/