Great as all this sounds, the trend towards online learning raises the question of just how effective online education is compared to traditional education. According to a recent study conducted by SRI International for the US Department of Education, online learners perform slightly better than students in traditional face-to-face classrooms. The study analyzed research that compared online and conventional learning at institutions of higher education and in K-12 settings between 1996 and 2008.

A key finding of the report is that students doing partial or all course work online rank, on average, in the 59th percentile, meaning better than 59% of all those who were scored; whereas students in traditional classrooms ranked in the 50th percentile. Though this significant difference doesn't quite mean the end of institutional schools, it will help put an end to the myth that online learning is inferior to traditional learning. It will also help foster greater interest in developing technology geared specifically to education. No doubt, we will see online schools for K-12 pop up everywhere.

Already a giant in online university degrees, Kaplan has begun offering programs for students in grades 6 to 12, tailored to each learner. The company also runs the Kaplan Academy, a tuition-free online public high school available in six states. Kaplan has over 70 years of experience in distance learning and will likely see its numbers soar as more students (supported by their parents) opt for non-traditional schooling, in the hope of improving their chances of being admitted to their college of choice.

With social networks, slidesharing, IM, video and more at their disposal, students are finding it easier to get homework help, attend seminars, and even learn new languages. And educators can connect at a global level to discuss lesson plans and offer seminars.

Although Twitter may not penetrate the classroom just yet, social media help students maintain an active social life beyond the classroom. One of the biggest myths about online education is that students will become socially inept. Instead, learning online allows students to study at their own pace, usually opening up hours for sports, hobbies, volunteer work, and time with friends. Most programs also allow students to study what interests them. Not that learning online is easier. In fact, quite the opposite: students require tremendous discipline and excellent time management skills, two qualities that Insight Schools uses to promote its program. Insight Schools operates a network of tuition-free, accredited, online public high schools. Students receive their own laptop, as well as personalized education tailored to their lifestyle.

One would imagine that high school and college students are more likely to take advantage of online programs, but homeschooling has existed as long as education has, so it's a viable option for those in younger grades as well. Some children have special needs and talents, others have disabilities or simply struggle in the class. Parents looking for an alternative to traditional schooling for their child now have options other than special classes, tutoring and expensive private schools. Online education offers students more one-on-one time with their instructors. And, as a bonus, most K-12 online programs are inexpensive or even tuition-free.

Guest author: Jodi Church, better known as tinythoughts, is a writer and social media enthusiast who has worked as an online communications manager for both Mister Wong and Lifestream.fm.

2. Edutopia: The George Lucas Educational Foundation launched Edutopia in the hopes of creating educational best practices for multimedia in the classroom. The site includes online polls, curated blogs, assessment tools and a dedicated magazine for educators at the K-12 levels. The 2009 Webby Award winning site's best content is in its library of high-production videos for teachers and educators.

3. LearnHub: LearnHub is a network where members can create their own communities, share lessons, chat, create tests and tutor each other online at no cost. Schools create their own virtual classrooms where students complete assignments, play games and share photos and text. One of the great features of this site is that the site's report generator allows teachers to track users' progress. While the content is not as in-depth as Scitable's, this is a good site for standardized test preparation and basic K-12 education exercises. For more examples of test preparation sites, see our RWW list of resources.

4. Moodle: Moodle is a free open-source course management platform designed to help teachers create better online resources. Microsoft Education Labs recently announced a new Live@edu plug-in for Moodle. Now in addition to providing lesson plan, assignment and quiz-making tools for teachers, schools also gain access to Outlook Live for e-mail, Office Live Workspace for document sharing, Windows Messenger for chat and Windows Live SkyDrive for 25 GB of storage. This tool is slightly more advanced than some of the others in the industry, but it does offer a number of scalable solutions.

5. Edmodo: Edmodo is a private micro-blogging service for schools that allows teachers to edit privacy options within their virtual classrooms. Educators generate a join code and students log-in to chat, link to files, share notes and check their collective calendars for upcoming exams, quizzes and Pro-D days. While some of the other tools we've presented offer an open-access learning environment, this invite-only service offers students the chance to utilize web-based multimedia tools while allowing teachers to control an online discussion's security.

6. YouTube Edu: YouTube Edu allows students and educators to access lectures from leading educators across the country. For example, Yale and Brandeis University professors upload their lessons for public enjoyment. One of the most popular Channels is the National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning - a collaboration launched by the Indian Institutes of Technology and Science in Bangalore.

7. ESL Video: ESL Video allows language educators to create quizzes from virtually any video on the internet. From here they can embed their quizzes into their classroom sites or redirect students to the ESL Video domain. Teachers tailor their video quizzes to specific learning units or create simple vocabulary quizzes like the one I made below using YouTube videos. While this tool may not be as sophisticated as some of the above services, its merit comes from the fact that teachers can incorporate pop culture products into their lesson plans with very little effort. Judging by the fact that the below Miley Cyrus video has more than 92 million YouTube views, teachers may be able to harness this tool to ignite a love of learning.

Let's be honest here, you're the educators! If you've got your own favorite resources, add them in the comments below.

Half the students (32 of 64) skipped the class and listened to the podcast only. The other half attended in person, where they also received a printed handout. A week later, the students were tested on the material.

Podcast Listeners Did Better

The students who downloaded the podcast alone averaged a C (71 out of 100) but those who attended class averaged a D. And those who listened to the podcast and took notes did even better - their average was 77.

Before university classrooms empty out, it's important to note that this is only preliminary research. McKinney's study involved only a single lecture. Also, motivation may have come into play as well. Her experiment didn't count for class credit, so students were encouraged to participate with iTunes gift cards. The high scorer from each group was awarded a $15 gift certificate for use in the online store.

McKinney now plans to further study podcasts in the classroom over the course of an entire semester, instead of just one class. She wonders if students might find podcasts more useful early on in a class, when the material is still new. Still, McKinney is a big believer in the power of technology and its impact on education. "I do think it's a tool," she says. "I think that these kids are programmed differently than kids 20 years ago."

Today, Microsoft announced a lineup of educational content creators that are already building products with Semblio. These partners include Cambridge University Press, Educational Testing Services, and Wolfram Research, the developers of the Mathematica.

It is important to note that Semblio, in its current state, is not geared towards educators themselves. Microsoft explicitly states that is is targeting educational organizations that employ professional developers and designers, though it is also targeting independent developers that can integrate Semblio's reporting and tracking features with existing learning management system. This will change, however, when Microsoft releases the Semblio tools for teachers with Microsoft Office, which is slated for a release by the end of 2009 or in early 2010.

Fulfilling the Promise of Electronic Textbooks

In their current state, electronic textbooks are often relatively static versions of their physical counterpart, with maybe a few videos thrown in for good measure. As these electronic textbooks are slowly making a push into the textbook market, tools like Semblio should allow publishers and teachers to create interactive textbooks that actually fulfill the promise of the medium instead of just recreating the traditional textbook experience in the digital world.

Semblio is geared towards the desktop, though, and a lot of publishers are moving towards publishing their content online (where the used book market can't eat into their margins). It will be interesting to see if Microsoft will also release an online component to Semblio in the future.

According to Tapscott, the existence of Google, Wikipedia, and other online libraries means that rote memorization is no longer a necessary part of education. "Teachers are no longer the fountain of knowledge; the internet is," Tapscott told the Times. "Kids should learn about history to understand the world and why things are the way they are. But they don't need to know all the dates. It is enough that they know about the Battle of Hastings, without having to memorize that it was in 1066. They can look that up and position it in history with a click on Google," he said.

He doesn't feel that method of learning is anti-education since the information we must all digest is coming in at lightning speed. "Children are going to have to reinvent their knowledge base multiple times," he continues. "So for them memorizing facts and figures is a waste of time."

For the older generations who grew up having to memorize historical dates and mathematical formulas, the idea that memorization shouldn't be a part of the educational experience is somewhat shocking. Of course you need to know the exact year something happened...don't you? Or is it better to just have a general idea so you can focus on better understanding the context and meaning?

Our Wired Brains

Today's students are growing up in a world where multi-tasking has them completely immersed in digital experiences. They text and surf the net while listening to music and updating their Facebook page. This "continuous partial attention" and its impacts on our brains is a much-discussed topic these days in educational circles. Are we driving distracted or have our brains adapted to the incoming stimuli?

A new book on the subject, "iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind," states that our exposure to the net is impacting the way our brains form neural pathways. Wiring up our brains like this makes us adept at filtering information, making snap decisions, and fielding the incoming digital debris, but sustained concentration, reading body language, and making offline friends are skills that are fading away.

If our brains are, in fact, becoming rewired, wouldn't it make sense that the way we teach students to learn should adapt, too? Actually, there aren't too many people who think so. Most educators, like Richard Cairns, Headmaster of Brighton College, one of the U.K's top-performing independent schools, believe that core level of knowledge was essential. "It's important that children learn facts. If you have no store of knowledge in your head to draw from, you cannot easily engage in discussions or make informed decisions," he says.

Do you agree?

Titled "Living and Learning With New Media," the study articulates the value of social networking, text messaging and other forms of new media use better than anything we've seen yet. It's a major contribution to our understanding of the new web and the way it impacts the world at large.

Leading education blogger Will Richardson pulls out some of his favorite parts of the study on his blog, some of which we excerpt below as well.

Self Directed Exploration Uniquely Motivating

New media allow for a degree of freedom and autonomy for youth that is less apparent in classroom setting. Youth respect one another's authority online, and they are often more motivated to learn from peers than from adults. Their efforts are also largely self-directed, and the outcome emerges through exploration, in contrast to classroom learning that is oriented toward set, predefined goals.

That makes sense, of course, but is it effective?

New Forms of Learning Essential to Participation in Contemporary Society

Social and recreational new media use as a site of learning. Contrary to adult perceptions, while hanging out online, youth are picking up basic social and technological skills they need to fully participate in contemporary society. Erecting barriers to participation deprives teens of access to these forms of learning. Participation in the digital age means more than being able to access "serious" online information and culture. Youth could benefit from educators being more open to forms of experimentation and social exploration that are generally not characteristic of educational institutions.

What kinds of rolls can adults play in this?

Adults Should Help This Process

Youth using new media often learn from their peers, not teachers or adults, and notions of expertise and authority have been turned on their heads. Such learning differs fundamentally from traditional instruction and is often framed negatively by adults as a means of "peer pressure." Yet adults can still have tremendous influence in setting "learning goals," particularly on the interest-driven side, where adult hobbyists function as role models and more experienced peers.

It's a new world for those privileged enough to have access to the web. The consequences of these changes will unfold in years to come. Do schools need to adapt to these new forms of learning in order to keep functioning well? Perhaps. But perhaps for some learning subjects in particular traditional schools have never worked as well as they could in the future if they support these new collaborative styles of learning.

This report is the end result of work done by 28 researchers over 3 years, based on interviews with 800 young people and 5000 hours of online observation. Check it out in full for yourself and let us know what you think.

We decided to follow up on and reprint that post here on a late Friday afternoon. We're sure many of readers either didn't see it at the time or hadn't yet discovered ReadWriteWeb. Not everyone who did read it agreed with our conclusions, so after the post below we've added some of our favorite pro and con comments from the original, plus a cool personal story from a member of the RWW community. What do you think? Does online noise play a meaningful role in your life?

Blogs, RSS, IM, Twitter and FriendFeed - the number of sources of sources of information online can feel like it's multiplying exponentially every day. It's easy, natural even, to feel overwhelmed. Especially when we are more familiar with the tightly controlled editorial policies of mainstream media.

The social media space is noisy, though. There are many times when filtering that noise effectively makes a lot of sense (some tools discussed below) - but there are also many times when noise is just what we need.

Experiments in Noise Control

There are many ways you can roughly cut down on the noise in your information stream. More emerge all the time and this is a very valuable direction for services to be exploring. We don't want to argue that noise is always good, it's clearly important to spend some time without it every day.

The most recent entry into the noise filtering scene is probably FriendFeed's new "best of" feature. Late last night FriendFeed rolled out the ability to view just the items most popular with your friends on the service for the last day, week or month. It's something many people have been hoping for and there's no doubt it will prove useful. If you're not using FriendFeed yet, you can check it out and add me as a friend if you like here.

Other services that are good for filtering out noise are del.icio.us popular for a particular tag, AideRSS and Google Reader's overly friendly shared items from friends feature. We'd love to read about your favorite noise filtering tools in comments below.

On the Beauty of Noise

Filtering isn't everything it's cracked up to be, though, and you wouldn't want to live in a fully filtered world all the time. Social media noise is an essential part of learning and living on the web. Hear are some reasons why.

Unexpected opportunities.

Some people call it "serendipity," others call it "passive and opportunistic information acquisition." (Erdelez, see below.) The less limited the boundaries of your scope of view are, the more likely you may be to find things you didn't even think to look for.

Scanning quickly over large quantities of roughly relevant information can turn up invaluable resources, opportunities, context and contacts that you can passively process or opportunistically leverage at will.

Future Needs

It's one thing to find something you didn't know you needed right now, it's a whole other skill to be able to recall information that seemed marginally useful at best in the past at a time in the future when the need for it arises. Who can't remember doing that before?

The ability to recall passively collected information that was gathered purposelessly in the past and put it to use in the future is a particularly powerful form of intelligence. A person with a substantial reservoir of generally relevant information is a great person to have on any team.

Maximizing Recall

Some people worry that being exposed to too much information will lead to not remembering very much of it. Scientists say that's not necessarily the case, though. Sanda Erdelez, for example, wrote the following in her study Information Encountering: It's More Than Just Bumping into Information

A majority of participants in my information encountering study, when asked about their past experiences of "bumping into information," were familiar with the notion of accidental discovery of information and could recall these experiences clearly

We may be afraid that we won't remember key information that rushed past us in a river of news, but Erdelez argues that when prompted about a particular incident of accidental discovery our memories are better than we might think.

We would argue here in fact that the more total information our minds are exposed to, the more particular items we'll be able to recall in the future. One useful strategy may be to spend some time going through a large amount of information just a touch more quickly than we're comfortable with.

General Knowledge

Beyond simple recall of particular information in the past, internalized noise can be just as useful in the formation of wisdom and perspective as introspection, thoughtfulness and other forms of attentiveness can be. Spend some time skimming, it'll make you a better person. You'll meet new people, learn new things - don't worry, it's fun.

Personal Growth

Serendipitous search in the offline world is believed to be one of the ways our understanding of the world expands. David Pescovitz at BoingBoing writes about Swedish ethnologist Erik Ottoson's PhD thesis titled Seeking One's Own: On Encounters Between Individuals and Objects:

"Ideals of what is beautiful, useful and reasonable," Ottoson argues "materialize in conjunction with the experience of what is available and what is absent or out of reach."

That's more than just a beautiful reason you should read BoingBoing, it's an interesting understanding of the way that swimming through noise helps us become who we are.

Conclusion

Quiet time, time off-line, deep thoughts and long books are all beautiful things - essential to a healthy intellectual, psychological and social life. We argue, though, that the opposite of all those things - online social media noise, is also a great opportunity that deserves to have its worth recognized at a time in history when many of us are struggling to deal with it.

So take some time for yourself when you can, find a nice place to sit with a cup of tea and blow through a few hundred items in your RSS reader. If you can relax into it, it'll help you remember some of the reasons why you love the internet.

Creative Commons photos, Christmas 2007 series, by Flickr user Kevin Dooley.

Following up on this post

We write enough here everyday and read enough around the web that sometimes looking back at a post from earlier in the same year can feel like we're visiting another planet. This post, though, still feels pretty familiar.

A few things have changed, for sure. Hutch Carpenter, the blogger who made the chart in this posts about different ways to relate to noise, got a job at enterprise social bookmarking startup Connectbeam - in part, he says in announcing his new position, because of his use of FriendFeed! That's pretty heart warming.

In announcing his new job, Hutch wrote the following:

FriendFeed opened my eyes to the possibilities of knowledge as the basis of relationships. The ways in which content from a variety of sources is a powerful, addictive basis for learning, conversations and collaboration. How activity streams are compelling reads. I've been active on FriendFeed since March, and it shocks me how much I know about web 2.0 and technology in general versus last year. I've still got much to learn, and FriendFeed will continue to be a good source for that.

Diverse Reactions from Readers

Hutch's is a pretty happy ending to a story about noise, but not everyone who read our original post agreed with it.

One dissenter summarized a number of peoples' positions well when he wrote: "The web is about ME first and then comes the noise driven by the hype and the false version of truth that is popularity." That commenter, who went by the name "directeur," is building a startup based on this belief of his called FeedEgo.com. It's a personal relevance based feed reader and it's worth checking out, even if we do disagree with its creator about relevance vs. noise.

Some commenters said that balance was really what's most important. "Portland Broker" for example, wrote that "As with most everything, I think it's a matter of balance. Noise is everywhere; sometimes it's serendipitous, often it's not. A world that is overly filtered is lacking, just as one that is not filtered at all."

How can you as a person online create that kind of balance? Iconoclastic tech/culture blogger Stetoscope suggested the following: " I think what makes noise unbearable is the guilty feeling we have to not read everything. But if we takes some times to dive in the noise, without feeling guilty of what we have missed, it is just a positive habit." We like that advice and it sounds like it could work well with some of the tips we shared in a post last Spring titled Seven Tips for Making the Most of Your RSS Reader.

What do you think? Is social media noise good for you? How has it been treating you lately? If you believe in the need for balance, what are your favorite ways to create it?

Decades of research on learning patterns in the fields of cognitive science and neuroscience have shown that the there is an optimum time to review what you're studying in order to absorb and retain the information. It's the moment right before you're about to forget what you just learned. But when is that time? It's hard for us to know when that moment is, but iKnow's software does. It's also personalized to you - iKnow!'s rate and approach are different for each individual. To calculate this particular rate, the software starts off assuming you're an "average" learner. As you respond to questions, the speed, accuracy, difficulty of the question and other considerations are taken into account to calculate what your ideal rate of learning - a degree above or below that initial average.

Listening To A Word On iKnow

In addition to the pure educational aspect of the program, iKnow! is also a social network where learners can add their own content for others to study. This content can include lists of words (parts of the body, days of the week, etc.). Users can also import data from sites like YouTube, flickr, and popular Japanese video sharing site, Nico Nico Douga. Structured data like that from Freebase can be imported as well. This content can be incorporated into the program and used by everyone.

At launch time, Cerego announced that they would soon open their learning APIs so developers can build their own custom applications and content for any topic using the iKnow! technology. For more information, visit www.iknow.co.jp.

Atomkeep is a service that aims to help users keep their profiles in sync across multiple networks. Registration is as simple as typing in your email address and a password. A confirmation email will be sent to your email address for verification. Unlike most sites, Atomkeep does not immediately prompt you to enter in the typical user information such as your name, birthday, etc. Instead, you're immediately taken to the 'Manage Accounts' page to choose from a list of social networks to import or merge existing data from. You can use your profiles from other networks to fill in your Atomkeep profile or manually add in this information yourself.

Supported networks for Atomkeep include:

• Twitter
• Plurk
• Disqus
• Facebook
• Technorati
• Blogger
• WordPress
• LinkedIn
• Flickr
• Last.FM
• Ning
• Pownce
• Yelp
• Youtube

Tons more are also supported with support for numerous more social networks on the way.

Synchronizing Your Profiles

You can synchronize all of your profiles or just one by providing your password for each account on the synchronization page. Atomkeep also shows you the synchronization process for each account that you choose to sync. Here's a demo video of how the synchronization process works.

Atomkeep.com: Step Four. Sync. from Olexandr Prokhorenko on Vimeo.

Too Many Social Networks

Are we spreading ourselves so thin across the web that we have to create more utilities in order to keep up? When services such as Atomkeep pop-up, one wonders if maybe we're joining too many social networks. On the other hand, there's no denying that Atomkeep is a handy tool if you're forever changing your information and can't stand the process of updating each of your accounts one by one.

Many people say that Twitter is frivolous and unimportant. In this case those people would be correct. Just six weeks ago the US Supreme Court rejected Exxon's appeal to drop a lawsuit alleging that its employees in Indonesia "committed murder, torture, sexual assault .. genocide and crimes against humanity" in defense of one of the world's largest liquid natural gas facilities. Placed in this context, whether or how this company deals with Twitter seems irrelevant.

The conversation about how Exxon should have or will deal with the spoofed Twitter account can be followed via a post last night on analyst Jeremiah Owyang's blog. It makes sense to tackle the general questions concerning "big brands" and new media, but a line should be drawn somewhere in order to keep technology in a larger perspective. The case of Exxon Mobil is on the other side of that line.

The Context in Indonesia

Indonesia is a sprawling country of more than 220 million people and an amazing 17,000 islands. It possesses huge amounts of liquid natural gas and gold and has major geo-political significance.

The country has a long and troubled history of international and internal conflicts but the US government's own documents detail US payment of local groups killing subversives based on US provided lists of individuals in the 1960's and US State Department acceptance of Indonesian government massacres of civilians using US supplied weapons in the 1970's.

Key player and Nixon Secretary of State Henry Kissinger retained financial interests in the country's natural resources throughout the 1980's, the human rights abuses alleged to have been committed by Indonesian soldiers working as Exxon employees were far from the only crimes alleged to have been committed in the 1990's (see in addition the Dili Massacre, for example) and since the turn of the 21st century multiple US administrations have sent elite US military training groups to "train the trainers" in Indonesia despite US Congressional bans against direct co-operation with the Indonesian military on the basis of documented human rights abuses.

It's not a pretty picture. There's an intense history of globe-dominating nations doing horrible things to the people of Indonesia.

The Current Lawsuit

On June 16th, 2008 the US Supreme Court denied a request by Exxon Mobil to dismiss a lawsuit titled Exxon Mobil v. John Doe, 07-81, brought by international rights groups on behalf of 11 villagers in Indonesia's Aceh province. The suit alleges that Indonesian soldiers hired by Exxon Mobil "committed murder, torture, sexual assault .. genocide and crimes against humanity."

One British rights organization specializing in Indonesia, called Down To Earth, further reports that "the company has been accused of providing the military with buildings used for torturing local people suspected of involvement in the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) and excavators to dig mass graves for the victims of military violence." The worst accounts of the treatment of civilians in Indonesia are something no one wants to read.

Exxon argued to the Supreme Court that the lawsuit against it should be dismissed because it involves issues of international relations that should be left to the Executive Branch. In 2002 the US State Department said that "adjudication of this lawsuit at this time would in fact risk a potentially serious adverse impact on significant interests of the United States..." Indonesia is a country heavily populated with Muslims and the US argued that a ruling on the Exxon lawsuit could harm anti-terrorist efforts, among other concerns.

Since that time various courts have shaped the debate such that now-resigned Solicitor General Paul Clement said this May that the case had been sufficiently narrowed to avoid harm to the nation's foreign policy interests. According to the Associated Press, the Bush administration urged the US Supreme Court to reject Exxon's request to drop the case this June.

Thus the lawsuit still stands and Exxon may, years later, have to answer to some allegations of human rights violations.

And what about Twitter? There may or may not be a time when Exxon's engagement with new social media is important, but this same summer when the Supreme Court has just said they will be judged is not that time.

New Media and International Human Rights

In October we wrote here about the last active bloggers in Burma, fighting to let the world know what was happening there as the military massacred monks and turned the country inside-out. In December we wrote about YouTube's deleting videos documenting torture of civilians by Egyptian police because of the site's policy against violent imagery. On the Fourth of July we wrote about the Iranian Parliament's consideration of the death penalty for subversive bloggers.

The internet and human rights intersect often. If we are to believe that these democratizing media are going to make the world a better place, then it's important to keep them in context regarding what's going on in the world outside of our tech niche. It's with that in mind that we point at the lawsuit and Supreme Court ruling against Exxon when the company's communication strategy with the world comes up in conversation.

After all, as Exxon Spokesperson Alan Jeffers said yesterday about Twitter: "It's our perception that social networking is based on honesty, transparency and trust..."

Photo: A market in Aceh, Indonesia. Creative Commons from Flickr user A. www.viajar24h.com