Online Learning??? …not so much

Bill Gates says, “a lot of people, including me, think [online learning] is the next place where the Internet will surprise people in how it can improve things—especially in combination with face-to-face learning. With the escalating costs of education, an advance here would be very timely.”

But come onnnn, there are SO many distractions online. The first and formost being FACEBOOK! Then there are the distractions offline aka watching TV. Last but not least, it’d be easier to fall asleep than to do our homework.

Online learning isn’t even interactive! I mean it tries to be but when I took my GRE class through Kaplan, I purposely signed up for the classroom version because I know I would never find time to complete the online version. I would make tons of excuses and I know that I would find myself not reading the screen and just clicking next>>next>>next if I took the online course.

That being said, online quizzes (like in my Linear Algebra class) should not be called quizzes. Teachers might as well call them homework because we always use our book and sometimes use other students to help us. Most online quizzes are multiple choice. Some students can be good guessers! ….I’m not saying that everyone cheats. I guess I’m just trying to say online quizzes are not as useful as some teachers might think.

GRE- Done

Day One: Dinner

Sooo I arrived today at around 3pm. As it turns out, I know another guy here from Univ. of Maryland. We were on the same flight and didn’t even know the other was coming! How ironic…

The only thing we pretty much did today was have dinner. Thankfully in the welcome ceremony they revealed to us that grad schools around the country will have twice as much money for fellowships than last year. By the year 2013, that figure should TRIPLE. For Georgia Tech specifically, they will give out 1000 awards this year and that will only increase as the next few years go by.

From the part that I was listening to, this is because Obama wants more engineers and will pay just about anything to get them.

I met a few new people…my roommate just arrived 😦 I thought I was gonna have my room all to myself.

What a small world it is. Tonight I met the fiancee of the grad student that I am supposed to be meeting with tomorrow. I wonder if I shall meet my husband in grad school. hmmmm

Well time to study for the GREs! 9 more daysss

Concepts

According to Kaplan, all you need is a fundamental understanding of the concept. Based on this general understanding, you can eliminate choices and make educated guesses. For example did you know that when looking for an antonym, you can drop choices that are the same in meaning because the GRE folk will never have you choose between 2 similar words. You can also ignore the choices that have no clear antonyms. These tips make it so much easier! All you really have to know is the concept of positive and negative charges. IF a word has a positive charge ten you can look for an antonym with a negative charge.

Ahhh concepts. They are so refreshing. And make life so much easier.

11 more days until the GRE!