E-learning.
It is not something new for us students. It is a love-hate relationship.

I vividly remember during the SARS period, the schools were phoning us students that school will be off until further notice. My native secondary school self (hey i bet you felt that way too back then! hahah) thought "wha-whoo.. FREE HOLIDAY!".

Little did I expect my teacher to drop a "bomb-shell" via email, it went like this:

DEAR CHILDREN,
AS YOU KNOW THAT THERE WILL BE NO SCHOOL UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE, HOWEVER WE WILL BE UPLOADING YOUR HOMEWORK VIA THE ONLINE PORTAL (IVLE). DOWNLOAD IT, COMPLETE IT AND I WILL BE COLLECTING IT WHEN YOU GET BACK TO SCHOOL.

EMAIL, USE THE FORUMS OR MSN ME IF THERE ARE ANY PROBLEMS.

FROM,YOUR NOT-SO-LOVELY FORM TEACHER.

I was utterly devastated. I remember complaining to my classmates via MSN that the idea of e-learning was dumb. The homework required us to watch online lectures and some hands-on flash games/activities. After a while, I thought e-learning was fun as we had the freedom to surf the web and find alternative resources to get the answers. From then, I realized that it did not matter if I knew the "correct answer" on my teachers' answer sheet, rather it was HOW i got the answer and the tidious process of searching for my own answer made it more memorable; stored up in my long-term memory.

E-learning opened up opportunities, it is definitely not rote learning. Only you YOURSELF define what you learn; becoming proactive in my pursuit of learning. That's cool! Even though i admit at times i am fustrated and get stuck of e-learning's lack of "formal structure", but that itself is a challenge.

A challenge to myself to push myself to break out of the "structured-mindset" and explore to the sky's limit.

hahhaha, yes so maybe i am raving too much about e-learning. After all, there are definitely some drawbacks. I feel that the increasing use of e-learning promotes multi-tasking.

1) Listening to itunes
2) Instant messenging your buddy via MSN, SKYPE
3) Doing research online
4) Updating Facebook and Twitter

ALL THESE CAN BE DONE SIMULTANEOUSLY. If one cant multi-task, you might be considered an "alien" in this 21st Century!

However, I did some research via the internet and found out that multi-tasking might be damaging to one's health. Interestingly, multitasking might also make learning new information virtually impossible (article cited: Stop the multitasking madness).

In addition, research conducted in which volunteers took a series of tests in which they had to categorize words, evaluate on-screen red triangles (while ignoring blue ones), switch back and forth between classifying letters and numbers, or press a button when there was a match between two letters presented at different times.Results showed that heavy multimedia users were at a disadvantage. Compared with those who rarely used more than one type of media at a time, heavy multitaskers had slower response times, most often because they were more easily distracted by irrelevant information, and because they retained that useless information in their short-term memory. (article cited: Drop that Blackberry. Multitasking might be harmful)

This information is important especially in everyday life, for instance driving. As it only takes a fraction of a second for you to take your eyes off the road and miss the guy making a right-hand turn into your lane.

Therefore, what is e-learning building or rather taking away? A generation of multitaskers who can do everything within a short amount of time? or a generation who is a jack of all trades but master of none.

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