Emerging Technologies in E-learning

After I read this chapter"Emerging Technologies in E-learning", the 2 opposite side of thought came to my mind.
The positive one,I was amazed how these technologies can enhance and facilitate learning, and our life. I have never used online for a formal education before but I decided to attend 801 class online using Elluminate since I can save $4 for train, save about 2 hours to travel to school. Since English is my second language and I understand the topic better when I have more time to think about it carefully,I don't feel comfortable to discuss in class ,most of the time I have nothing to say; moreover,for this kind of class don't have any hand on skill and very one can access to the same learning material and discussing forum.Then online option using technologies is suit my leaning style.But for hand on class like learn how to use a software I think face to face class room still works better.Although,I can learn a lot of software online like lynda.com,I learn better form traditional classroom. love that these emerging technology provide the learners more alternative to choose what is the best way to learn.We are all unique that must be nice if we can play around with technologies that we can access and customize our own learning solution.

I also like the idea that Wiki sites adopted some useful technique from the commercial site.According to the reading, Wikipidia adopted rating systems from Ebay to help solving problem on how to verify the accuracy of each educational resource. This is the important point and as I am the one who often rely on information on Wikipedia, how can I know that the content is accurate since anyone can create the content. As I am a Ebay buyer,I like this system and I think this rating system can solve this problem in some degree.

For the negative thought,after I read through the list of these emerging technologies,I felt there are overwhelming numbers of technologies I have to catch up if I want to be part of this profession. Several terms in the list that I have never heard about before like: mashups,swarmcasting,long tail.Nowadays,technologies change very fast, not only have to keep up date with brand new technologies, but also software that we already used keep up dating the new versions.I like to keep track how many time a week my computer ask me to update new software.These scared me since I am looking forward to work as a structional designer in the near future.A lot of thing we learn to day like software or some technologies might be gone or out of date in the next few years.I know that we cannot stop learning but we have to learn even faster in this flooding of information and technologies age.