Ñòóäîïåäèÿ

Ãëàâíàÿ ñòðàíèöà Ñëó÷àéíàÿ ñòðàíèöà

ÊÀÒÅÃÎÐÈÈ:

ÀâòîìîáèëèÀñòðîíîìèÿÁèîëîãèÿÃåîãðàôèÿÄîì è ñàäÄðóãèå ÿçûêèÄðóãîåÈíôîðìàòèêàÈñòîðèÿÊóëüòóðàËèòåðàòóðàËîãèêàÌàòåìàòèêàÌåäèöèíàÌåòàëëóðãèÿÌåõàíèêàÎáðàçîâàíèåÎõðàíà òðóäàÏåäàãîãèêàÏîëèòèêàÏðàâîÏñèõîëîãèÿÐåëèãèÿÐèòîðèêàÑîöèîëîãèÿÑïîðòÑòðîèòåëüñòâîÒåõíîëîãèÿÒóðèçìÔèçèêàÔèëîñîôèÿÔèíàíñûÕèìèÿ×åð÷åíèåÝêîëîãèÿÝêîíîìèêàÝëåêòðîíèêà






Brief History of the Intensive Use of Technologies in Formal Education in Mexico






The first efforts to use technology in me Mexican classrooms date to the 1960s in the Faculty of Medicine of the University National Autonomous Mexico, where surgery-was transmitted live using closed-circuit television. However, the real pioneer in using technology to improve formal education in Mexico was the Telesecundaria, which uses a model that combines distance education with traditional education. The classes begin witii a fifteen-minute television program that presents a lesson and con­tinues with thirty-five minutes of work in class with aid of a professor and printed materials. For more than three decades, the Telesecundaria has responded to the ed­ucational needs of Mexico's rural communities, where it was not feasible to imple­ment traditional secondary schools (levels 7 to 9) due to the small student population and difficulty in attracting instructors.

The Telesecundaria has experienced substantial growth since its creation in 1968. After educational reform was implemented in 1993 and satellite broadcasts



The Handbook of Blended Learning


were introduced, its coverage increased considerably. In fact, it has grown from 304 schools and approximately 512, 700 students in 1993, to 817, 200 in 1998, to 890, 400 in 1999. In 1968, when it began to function, there were only 304 schools in the Telesecundaria program. Ten years later, there were 7, 289 schools in the system and by 1998, there were 13, 054 schools and 38, 698 instructors. Current registrations in the Telesecundaria account for 16.6 percent of all registrations in grades 7 to 9 in Mexico. Traditional general schools account for 53.6 percent of the registrations, technical schools account for 28.5 percent, and the schools for in-service training the remaining 1.3 percent. It is anticipated that Telesecundaria will have nearly 1.1 million students in 2004.

As the success of the Telesecundaria and support for educational television programs grew, the Mexican government created EDUSAT (Satellite Educational System) to provide educational programming via satellite television. With more than thirty-three receptors in an equal number of schools and libraries, EDUSAT is now the major system of educational television of Latin America. With six chan­nels broadcasting 360 hours of programming per week, there is a wealth of for­mal and informal educational content broadcast, from basic education to graduate-level distance programs.

Growth of the Internet in Mexico

Tecnologico de Monterrey and the Autonomous National University of Mexico (UNAM) were the first educational institutions in Mexico to use the Internet dur­ing the 1980s. Since that time, many other educational institutions in Mexico have used the Internet to support their educational programs. In fact, many private and public universities in Mexico now use the Internet as exclusive support of infor­mation and promotion.

The ITESM has continued to be a well-respected pioneer in the use of the Internet for education. For instance, it was the first institution in Mexico to use Lotus Notes and LearningSpace for classroom delivery in the early 1990s (Acuna, 1995).

According to statistics presented by the INEGI (National Institute of Statis­tics, Geography and Informatics; see https://www.inegi.gob.mx) in Mexico, the number of Internet users has grown tremendously since 2000. In 2000, there were around 5 million users; just two years later, there were more than 10 million. Since then, this number has continued to grow exponentially. The sudden increase of those with Internet access in Mexico could be due in part to the diverse uses that it is given. Common uses in Mexico include e-mail (4.2 million), consultation or investigation on the Web (4.2 million), online chatting (2.8 million), various


Tecnologico de Monterrey in Mexico



educational uses (2.3 million), entertainment (2.1 million), software (308, 829), and videoconferencing (245, 036), among many others (Instituto Nacional de estadis-tica, Geografia e Informatica, 2004). This increase in access and use of the Internet in Mexico sets the stage for me success of the K-12 Red Escolar program and the ITESM Virtual University described in the following sections.

La Red Escolar: Internet Tools for Children

In 1997 the Latin-American Institute for Educational Communication (Instituto Latinoamericano de Comunicacion Educativa, ILCE) initiated the Red Escolar project, which provides Web resources for K-12 schools. In the initial phase of this project, five networks were installed across 140 schools. From 1999 to 2001, 223 educators used this school network. During the past few years, the use of this project has exploded. At present, Red Escolar receives an average of more than 417, 000 daily visits, with more than 180, 000 students involved in collaborative projects and more than 8, 000 teachers participating in the training. In addition, more than 15, 000 educators now connect to Red Escolar, with more than 185, 000 computers. The content of Red Escolar has been focused primarily on the second and third grades and then the other levels of K-12 education.

The main purpose of Red Escolar is to offer the same educational opportu­nities to all Mexican students. This program helps bring materials to improve teaching and learning to each school and each center for teachers. With the sup­port of information and communication technologies (IGT), it promotes the ex­change of educational proposals and didactic resources, while fostering student and school success experiences.

Children in the early grades benefit tremendously from this program. For ex­ample, they use computers to carry out simple activities with CDs, read online texts, and become familiar with children's stories through the Internet. Recog­nizing that Red Escolar benefits the entire educational community, strategies have been established so that the population knows the products and can develop collaborative projects.

The main objective of Red Escolar is to support formal basic education and elevate the quality of the teaching—learning process. It can be used from different pedagogical perspectives (for example, constructivist, humanist, and cognitivist), offering students educational models that encourage them to be become builders, mediators, and investigators of knowledge. Those coordinating this project con­sider students active beings, with their own individual characteristics and inter­ests, who benefit from independent study as well as multiple social and individual interactions. The projects and courses of Red Escolar propose diverse activities,



The Handbook of Blended Learning


such as documentary investigations using online technology, CD-ROMs, and videos. The teacher can divide the students into teams that rotate roles so that each student can participate in some phase of the project. This program proposes, over the next few years, to introduce computers with multimedia, connected to the Internet and with an extensive range of educational content to all public secondary and primary schools of Mexico.

Fifteen Years of Teaching with Technology in ITESM

The third project of educational significance and with wide success using tech­nology in Mexico is the creation of the Virtual University within the Instituto Tecnologico ó de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM) in 1989. In taking advantage of the satellite systems and the Internet, the Virtual University has grad­uated more than forty-eight hundred students at the master's and doctoral levels on thirty-three campuses and in thirty-four national and international headquar­ters. In addition, it has contributed to the formal education of more than 200, 000 professionals in Mexico, Latin America, and other parts of the world. Currently, the Virtual University supports professional careers with courses given by spe­cialists through Internet and satellite broadcasts. Since the fall of 2003, it has placed in motion a postgraduate course program series that is entirely online in the areas of education, administration, sciences, and engineering, as well as the areas of political science and public administration.

Parallel to the development of the Virtual University, since 1995 the Tech­nological of Monterrey has had a program of intensive use of technology sup­porting classes with the use of a learning management system (LMS). The use of technology such as LMS is in accordance with its mission statement for the year 2005. The model is based on the use of a LMS such as LearningSpace, WebCT, and Blackboard with the support of different didactic and interactive techniques, including problem-based learning, cooperative and collaborative learning, and project-oriented learning.

In addition to the LMS, the technological elements of the blended learning model of the Institute of Monterrey include the Internet, å-òàÄ, digital libraries, and simulations. The digital library, accessible over the Internet, gives all stu­dents access to valuable resources even if they are physically distant from those re­sources. In addition, e-mail permits instructors and students separated by time and place to communicate with each other. Electronic discussion group tools and virtual team spaces enable virtual collaborative work and have made possible the Mastery in Educational Technology program of the Virtual University, which integrates undergraduate and graduate students from all over the globe.


Tecnologico de Monterrey in Mexico



Educational software packages including simulations are also available on the network to support teaching and learning. Among the electronic applications that can promote learning are flight simulators (Promodel, Intopia), virtual laborato­ries (Labview, Matlab, Applet), word processors (Word, Works), calculation tools (Excel, Lotus Notes), presentation applications (PowerPoint, Flash), design appli­cations (Autocad, 3dstudioPhothoshop), and others that professors incorporate in their online courses.

Learning Management Systems to Support a Blended Approach

The use of interactive technology tools can help configure a course or program according to the educational models specified or delivery methods required. In the ITESM, technology is employed to offer two different types of courses: fully online courses and blended courses in which asynchronous tools are used to sup­port face-to-face activities. In the past five years, a blended model has become a requirement in the ITESM. The use of the computer on the part of the profes­sor and students as a work tool is now a requirement for all courses that apply the current educational model of the ITESM.

The tendency in the institute is to promote network-based learning, which is composed of diverse interactive and collaborative technologies that provide com­pact and agile administration of the didactic process as well as rich and engaging learning experiences. This system of tools employed by the ITSEM is housed within a technological platform; the first platform we used at the institute was LearningSpace. While such a tool brings the advantages of standardization across an extensive and dispersed system, there are also distinct disadvantages, such as being tied to a single product or educational vendor.

The LearningSpace, which was based on Lotus Notes, was one of the first LMSs available. Another competing LMS that is being used in our system is Black­board. The basic functions of these platforms are very similar, although Blackboard has a more centralized infrastructure to support online learning. Understanding the differences between LearningSpace and Blackboard can be useful for profes­sors or instructional designers who desire to pass information from the Learning-Space platform to that of Blackboard. In fact, this migration of courses from one platform to another is among the key trends within the institute. Table 25.1 contains some of the strengths and limitations that we have identified of the two LMS options.

As with any other online learning implementation, there are specific needs that arise from professors and students within these online environments



The Handbook of Blended Learning


 


TABLE 25.1.


STRENGTHS AND LIMITATIONS OF LEARNINGSPACE AND BLACKBOARD.


 



Ïîäåëèòüñÿ ñ äðóçüÿìè:

mylektsii.su - Ìîè Ëåêöèè - 2015-2024 ãîä. (0.008 ñåê.)Âñå ìàòåðèàëû ïðåäñòàâëåííûå íà ñàéòå èñêëþ÷èòåëüíî ñ öåëüþ îçíàêîìëåíèÿ ÷èòàòåëÿìè è íå ïðåñëåäóþò êîììåð÷åñêèõ öåëåé èëè íàðóøåíèå àâòîðñêèõ ïðàâ Ïîæàëîâàòüñÿ íà ìàòåðèàë