Naming for online programs confusing? Follow FizzicsEd Articles: Comments 0 For years the distance education community has struggled with the naming of ‘online programs’. The reason for this is that there are so many types of online programs! When you think about what an ‘online program’ is, it could encompass many things; Classroom documents being shared Website repositories and reference notes Virtual tours of real buildings Augmented reality Virtual reality Video conferencing Web conferencing Blended learning of online and offline programming Web polls Collaboration tools for ideas on a document Asynchronous video sharing sites Live streaming and more…. It’s confusing, yet I’ve worked in distance education for years! Now that the world is coming to grips with using this technology, there really isn’t a unified approach for what to call things that everyone can agree upon. This issue was identifed as such a problem that in early 2019 it was raised as a research item and submitted to the Journal of Museum Education by Kasey Gaylord-Opalewski & Lynda O’Leary; Kasey Gaylord-Opalewski & Lynda O’Leary (2019) Defining Interactive Virtual Learning in Museum Education: A Shared Perspective, Journal of Museum Education, 44:3, 229-241, DOI: 10.1080/10598650.2019.1621634 https://doi.org/10.1080/10598650.2019.1621634 Please read the journal article for the full findings! Within their research, they surveyed members of their own distance learning communities as well as members of the Pinnacle Education Collaborative, a group which I co-founded along with 30 or so awesome distance educators from across some of North America’s best-known museums, zoos, aquariums, galleries, science centres and more. We discussed our perspectives and the confusion we had seen across thousands of school districts globally. We ended up settling on the term Interactive Virtual Learning after the research, as it best describes nearly all of the things that occur during a live, interactive, online program for remote learners. Of course, this has not been picked up as people naturally have not all read the journal article and the different terms are now flying around the world due to social media. Whilst there is not much we can do about that, at least being aware of what it means allows us to slowly bring together the main names for ‘online learning’ or ‘distance learning’ over time and work out a new name yet again (!). Presenting a weather & pressure video conference to students in New York Why bother with this? Well, these online programs are being advertised globally by all manner of organisations. As the torrent of information gets poured towards parents, schools, libraries and more, the barrage of information is only going to cause confusion and eventually the same frustration that the distance learning community has always felt. Moral of the story? Don’t chop and change names! If your district uses a particular name, please stick with it – at least until the powers that be meet and agree on unified nomenclature that fits everyone. If you’re wondering about how out of hand it had become by 2019, have a look at the list of names for simple lessons using video conferencing I’ve seen below. Imagine what this will be like by the end of 2020! Perhaps I’ll be wrong, maybe the social media sharing will produce a unified naming that makes sense for everyone and we can finally put to bed the classification issue in distance education that has hung around for years. No matter what, if you were able to download this article to read this, the conferencing technology is available to you now. Just make sure that you follow decent child protection protocols to avoid kids being exposed to the dark side of the internet and you’ll be fine. Hopefully, after this COVID-19 crisis is over, we can at least look forward to more learners which a high degree of digital literacy and perhaps that is the silver lining that we can all cling to as educators. Happy teaching, Ben Newsome PS… Here’s some names I’ve heard over the years for lessons using video conferencing! No wonder it’s confusing. Honestly these all mean the same thing in many ways.. just a camera and microphone for people to talk to each other and to show things: Virtual excursions Virtual incursions Virtual learning Virtual classes Virtual conferencing or conferences Virtual enrichment programs Virtual programs Online classes Online incursions Online learning Online enrichment programs Online excursions Online video conferencing Online conferencing Online schooling Online teaching Distance learning Remote classes Remote excursions Remote incursions Remote conferencing Remote enrichment programs Remote learning programs Video excursions Video incursions Video conferencing Interactive video conferencing Interactive Virtual Learning IVC VC programs Web conferencing Web excursions Web incursions Live web remote visits Live online classes Live interactive conferencing Live web conferencing Live virtual programs Live online incursions Live learning online……brain hurting! The above is not even making stuff up. Can you list any more you’ve heard? Love Science? Subscribe! Join our newsletter Receive more lesson plans and fun science ideas. PROGRAMS COURSES SHOP SCIENCE PARTIES Calendar of Events HIGH SCHOOL Science@Home 4-Week Membership 12PM: March 2024 Feb 26, 2024 - Mar 29, 2024 12PM - 12PM Price: $50 - $900 Book Now! PRIMARY Science@Home 4-Week Membership 2PM: March 2024 Feb 26, 2024 - Mar 22, 2024 2PM - 2PM Price: $50 - $900 Book Now! Light and Colour Online Workshop, Jan 18 PM Jan 18, 2024 2PM - 3PM Price: $50 Book Now! Light and Colour Online Workshop, Jan 18 AM Jan 18, 2024 9AM - 11AM Price: $50 Book Now! Lego Robotics, Sydney Olympic Park Jan 2024 Jan 24, 2024 9AM - 12PM Price: $50 Book Now! Creative Coding, Sydney Olympic Park Jan 2024 Jan 24, 2024 1PM - 4PM Price: $50 Book Now! Creative Coding, Sydney Olympic Park July 11 2023 Jul 11, 2023 9AM - 4PM Price: $100 Book Now! Fizzics Education STEAM Day: Robots vs Dinosaurs, Lalor, Apr 14 Apr 14, 2023 9AM - 12PM Price: $45 - $50 Book Now! Creative Coding, Sydney Olympic Park April 14 2023 Apr 14, 2023 9AM - 4PM Price: $100 Book Now! Science@Home After School 4-Week Membership: March 2023 Mar 06, 2023 - Mar 31, 2023 4PM - 5PM Price: $40 - $1200 Book Now! Featured Articles Blowing stuff up for MAAS! Topics Apps [11] Distance Education [51] Kitchen Chemistry [7] Safety [2] Distance Learning [19] Student encouragement [2] online [5] image [1] Africa [1] Agriculture [4] Eastershow [2] Maker Space [11] Scicomm [141] primary education [46] STEAM [10] virtual [2] gamification [1] Asia Pacific [1] Art [17] Edchat [223] Maths [14] Scied [34] literacy [7] Higher education [4] Child online safety [1] Esports [1] Easter [1] Augmented Reality [4] Edtech [68] Media [18] Science [6] secondary education [45] teacher [1] dis [0] biotechnology [1] curriculum [2] AussieED [1] Education [212] Museums [31] Science News [4] Christmas [1] Vacation care [1] Film [1] computational thinking [2] high [1] Awards [14] Educhange [5] Music [3] Social Media [8] experiments [6] middle school [2] Inquiry-based learning [5] digital technologies [5] Earth science [1] Big History [1] Environment [39] NASA [6] Soils [1] seasonal [1] Artificial Intelligence [4] List [1] Games [1] Medicine [1] Biology [44] Events [45] National Science Week [3] Space Science [33] competitions [13] Sustainability [12] Student investigation [2] Social Emotional Learning [1] CAST test [1] Books [3] Farming [1] Outdoors [36] Sport [8] careers [10] UN SDGs [4] collaboration [1] Engineering [4] US Education [1] China [1] Food [5] Outreach [35] STEM [228] Physics [6] Global [2] K to 2 education [1] Virtual reality [2] citizen science [1] Churchill Fellowship [19] Gaming [7] Ozscied [2] Teaching [266] Chemistry [5] International [1] Photography [1] Play [1] numeracy [1] Cleveland [1] Gifted [7] Podcasts [119] Television [2] design thinking [8] Chinese student visits [1] Parenting [4] preservice teaching [5] Higher order thinking [1] Club [4] History [4] Pop Culture [4] Toys & Gadgets [1] project-based learning [5] Science & Technology Camps [1] Lesson ideas [1] Comedy [2] Philosophy [1] Coding [14] Indigenous [3] Preschool [24] Video Conferencing [40] family [2] Design [2] Lab Tech [1] math [1] Pakistan [1] Cooking [3] Kids [36] Remote Education [18] Virtual Excursions [9] Inclusive education [6] Oceans [6] Leadership [1] Electricity [1] Agritech [1] Dinosaurs [7] Kids Parties [5] Robotics [12] Edutech [26] Classroom management [1] video conference [1] special needs [1] scholarship [1] Botany [1] Load More Topics
For years the distance education community has struggled with the naming of ‘online programs’. The reason for this is that there are so many types of online programs! When you think about what an ‘online program’ is, it could encompass many things; Classroom documents being shared Website repositories and reference notes Virtual tours of real buildings Augmented reality Virtual reality Video conferencing Web conferencing Blended learning of online and offline programming Web polls Collaboration tools for ideas on a document Asynchronous video sharing sites Live streaming and more…. It’s confusing, yet I’ve worked in distance education for years! Now that the world is coming to grips with using this technology, there really isn’t a unified approach for what to call things that everyone can agree upon. This issue was identifed as such a problem that in early 2019 it was raised as a research item and submitted to the Journal of Museum Education by Kasey Gaylord-Opalewski & Lynda O’Leary; Kasey Gaylord-Opalewski & Lynda O’Leary (2019) Defining Interactive Virtual Learning in Museum Education: A Shared Perspective, Journal of Museum Education, 44:3, 229-241, DOI: 10.1080/10598650.2019.1621634 https://doi.org/10.1080/10598650.2019.1621634 Please read the journal article for the full findings! Within their research, they surveyed members of their own distance learning communities as well as members of the Pinnacle Education Collaborative, a group which I co-founded along with 30 or so awesome distance educators from across some of North America’s best-known museums, zoos, aquariums, galleries, science centres and more. We discussed our perspectives and the confusion we had seen across thousands of school districts globally. We ended up settling on the term Interactive Virtual Learning after the research, as it best describes nearly all of the things that occur during a live, interactive, online program for remote learners. Of course, this has not been picked up as people naturally have not all read the journal article and the different terms are now flying around the world due to social media. Whilst there is not much we can do about that, at least being aware of what it means allows us to slowly bring together the main names for ‘online learning’ or ‘distance learning’ over time and work out a new name yet again (!). Presenting a weather & pressure video conference to students in New York Why bother with this? Well, these online programs are being advertised globally by all manner of organisations. As the torrent of information gets poured towards parents, schools, libraries and more, the barrage of information is only going to cause confusion and eventually the same frustration that the distance learning community has always felt. Moral of the story? Don’t chop and change names! If your district uses a particular name, please stick with it – at least until the powers that be meet and agree on unified nomenclature that fits everyone. If you’re wondering about how out of hand it had become by 2019, have a look at the list of names for simple lessons using video conferencing I’ve seen below. Imagine what this will be like by the end of 2020! Perhaps I’ll be wrong, maybe the social media sharing will produce a unified naming that makes sense for everyone and we can finally put to bed the classification issue in distance education that has hung around for years. No matter what, if you were able to download this article to read this, the conferencing technology is available to you now. Just make sure that you follow decent child protection protocols to avoid kids being exposed to the dark side of the internet and you’ll be fine. Hopefully, after this COVID-19 crisis is over, we can at least look forward to more learners which a high degree of digital literacy and perhaps that is the silver lining that we can all cling to as educators. Happy teaching, Ben Newsome PS… Here’s some names I’ve heard over the years for lessons using video conferencing! No wonder it’s confusing. Honestly these all mean the same thing in many ways.. just a camera and microphone for people to talk to each other and to show things: Virtual excursions Virtual incursions Virtual learning Virtual classes Virtual conferencing or conferences Virtual enrichment programs Virtual programs Online classes Online incursions Online learning Online enrichment programs Online excursions Online video conferencing Online conferencing Online schooling Online teaching Distance learning Remote classes Remote excursions Remote incursions Remote conferencing Remote enrichment programs Remote learning programs Video excursions Video incursions Video conferencing Interactive video conferencing Interactive Virtual Learning IVC VC programs Web conferencing Web excursions Web incursions Live web remote visits Live online classes Live interactive conferencing Live web conferencing Live virtual programs Live online incursions Live learning online……brain hurting! The above is not even making stuff up. Can you list any more you’ve heard?
This website uses cookies to improve user experience. By using our website you consent to all cookies in accordance with our Cookie Policy.
Thank you for looking to subscribing to our newsletter 🙂 Through this service you’ll be first to know about the newest free experiments, science news and special offers. PLUS: Get a free Kitchen Chemistry Booklet with >20 experiments, how to use variables plus a handy template!
Please fill out the details below and an email will be sent to you. Once you get that just click on the link to confirm your subscription and you're all done!