Being a Teacher is Hard

You know, electronic learning is not only for students. In fact, before any student is to be taught the lesson, it’s the teacher that has to learn it first especially in this day and age when sometimes being a teacher means being a student all over again.

Any elearning company is primarily composed of teachers. I know this because one of my sisters works in a company that uses virtual learning to teach Koreans how to properly speak English. Sometimes, her work requires her to teach at home. This is where my cousin and I do a funny appearance behind my sister’s room whenever the door is left open. Then we hide if my sister suddenly looks back at an empty hallway, only the find us and then shut and lock the door tight. I bet some of her Korean students will suddenly see a paradigm shift in the lesson.

Now back to teachers. Besides technicians, software developers and, of course, the management, teachers are the ones that keep work going inside any elearning company. They may have the software, the good connection and good system to top it off, but no one’s going to steer the wheel of the business if the teachers are gone. This is me, typing on the influence of my economics textbook my professor recommended.

Although I have to say, online learning is really a strange business especially when the fact is, there are students who can’t even adapt to the classroom type of education. And that goes double for teachers. Why would they prefer this kind of teaching? Whatever happened to the dream of being present and teaching kids? But then, I figured, it’s also a tough life and not everybody gets what they want. Some don’t even have the privilege to take up college. This is made even tougher for the teachers since there are a lot of faulty connections and ill-fated equipments in the job’s nature. Bring an umbrella and expect a rainfall of tears and angst when the connection goes haywire. Not only are these people expected to lecture kids who are the actual students but they also need to teach older and working people who are not actually enrolled students. Add the fact that they haven’t really mastered some of things they teach.

Reminder to self: don’t be a teacher if you can’t handle sacrifice.

iTunes U Elearning Online for Developing Countries

Education is such an expensive commodity; coming from an Ivy League school, educational costs could be exponentially higher. So when I heard about iTunes U elearning online or iTunes University where in a number of Ivy League universities enabled their class lectures to be accessed for free, I had to see what its all about.

As a student in a developing country like the Philippines, quality education is hard to come by especially if you’re just an ordinary student with no rich daddy to pay for college tuition. Unlike in the United States where students are given student loans that they can repay later after they graduate, in this country, you would be lucky to qualify for student aid that only covers a fraction of the cost of tuition.


corporate learning solutions

Another criticism I have of the educational system here is the lack of libraries especially for students like me who study in a public university. Private universities have their libraries stocked with all the latest books but you’d be hard-pressed to find reliable public libraries that aren’t dilapidated and didn’t look like it was about to be condemned. Needless to say, there are no public Internet stations where poor students can browse the net for free like in the US. We all had to rely on the expensive Internet cafes strewn across the city. This is why I think students like me should take advantage of this free but reliable educational program.

Lectures from actual classes at prestigious universities around the world can be accessed through iTunes. I had iTunes in my old computer because I was given a second hand iPod Nano with video for my birthday. The content in these classes were amazing and I can hardly believe that all these are free! There were open courses on almost every subject imaginable. I especially liked the linguistics classes because I’m interested in languages.

I highly recommend this elearning online course especially for university students in developing countries. I hope the government can provide more internet facilities for free because students would truly benefit from free courses. iTunes U truly opened my mind to the possibilities of studying interesting courses that does not even exist in my country.