Danir’s blog post #2

Hey Danir,

I loved reading your sunny take on technological developments as enabling more and more open and accessible learning worldwide. I can be kind of a downer on technological developments myself, as they can just as easily be wielded for ill as for good, but I do have to whole-heartedly agree with you as to their benefits when it comes to online and open education. It was cool to hear a bit about your own experiences with such learning too and it prompts me to share my own. Thanks to the availability of online courses I was able, over a stretch of nine years in which I worked, switched jobs and moved multiple times, to complete enough courses to constitute one full year of university. This enabled me to transfer straight into the second year of UVic’s education program as a full-time student last year, and I’m now well on my way toward graduation. I don’t think this could have occurred another way. I would never have been prepared to enter into university in-person at the expense of the other things I had going on in my life—it just wasn’t going to happen. But my experience in online courses gradually got me back into the swing of school without requiring me to sacrifice other projects just yet. At this point, although this particular course is online, I’ve been enjoying being both in school and at school (in person), and I’m newly bullish about making it through the next two years as a full-time student.

And my experience was all mediated through fairly rudimentary use of the internet and Moodle. Possibilities for future educational experiences certainly do suggest greater accessibility and flexibility that will benefit the next generation of students everywhere.