Learning on the internet

Resources for learning on the internet

When it was established, the internet was imagined to be a global library where you could find information on any topic. Now, students and teachers have discovered the internet offers much more for learners.

The internet provides opportunities for:

• deep, meaningful and authentic learning, especially when used to connect people to each other
• people who were previously isolated by geography, socio-economic status, or age, to participate in the learning process.

For example, a student in outback NSW can watch lectures in physics from MIT (the Massachusetts Institute of Technology), or communicate in real time with experts in their field of interest.

Here are some ways people are learning from each other by connecting and sharing online.

Online courses

Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) allow you participate along with hundreds or thousands of other students online. Learning is more a conversation involving people from all over the world. 

MOOCs have changed the way we access quality online education. You can take a free course at a distance, such as The Science of Happiness at the University of California or an Introduction to Computer Science at Harvard University.

MOOCs give students of all ages and life experiences the opportunity to develop new skills and pursue interests with the support of other learners.

Rather than a structured experience where you read texts then complete assessments, in a MOOC you're encouraged to:

• engage with other participants to discuss the content
• pose and debate questions raised in the readings, and 
• offer and receive help from other learners where needed. 

Many MOOCs are free, including some from prestigious universities. Visit:

• Open Yale courses
• MOOC.org

Online collaboration

Collaboration is a 21st century skill that is an important part of work both now and in the future. Software that supports collaboration can help you build learning communities. The more you can connect through learning, the richer the experience. 

Schools are making learning more collaborative by:

• using web-based tools like Google Workspace and Microsoft Office365 for collaborating on assignments and sharing files anywhere, any time
• encouraging teachers to organise and share classroom content with tools like Google Classroom and Microsoft OneNote to create digital learning hubs.

Aurora College is an online selective school for rural and remote students throughout NSW, where students communicate and collaborate using a variety of digital platforms.

Teachers in NSW Department of Education can use the digital learning selector to learn more about the range of education apps and software available for use in NSW public schools.

Online curation

Curating is how we select, organise and present information. This skill is essential to how young people are learning to navigate the digital world. While many of us have unlimited access to information these days, it's how we use this information that's important.

Parents and teachers can guide children and young people to become better information curators by helping them to:

• understand the images and text they’re seeing online
• identify legitimate sources and spot fake news
• scan information to look for relevant keywords 
• consider how current and reliable the content they’ve found is
• make sense of input from other users, such as comments, reviews and feedback
• use and share information in the right way, showing respect to the creator.