Online Education Tools are Changing the Way We Teach Today

Distance Learning : Online Education Tools are Changing the Way We Teach Today by Melissa Peterman

Since the advent of the Internet, professors and other education professionals have combined their extensive university databases in conjunction with the Internet, tapping into its resources, to create custom text books using information from around the world, not just within their own notes to create new educational works.

By using an XML content server to organize, manipulate and query information from the within the university's XML repository, the Internet and other universities, a professor can potentially search within his or hers own university database as well as the World Wide Web to seek answers. He or she can also submit a question and receive a response from around the world and get a different perspective be it from Japan, Australia or even Egypt instructors.

Imagine being a professor yourself and needing to quickly assemble a textbook. With a powerful XML content server, you can enter detailed queries into cyber space and receive a multitude of responses.

• Keep up with the rest of the world and what they are educating to their classrooms • With a communal XML database, bugs can be quickly found and fixed with everyone's help • Save valuable time needed for developing coursework with instant access to an online database, with immediate returns on queries • Reduce student expenses for books and also the environment with the option for students to go online for course materials.

For many organizations, the first step on the path to content agility is to create a master XML repository of their content on top of which they can build new information products that slice, dice and repurpose content in new and exciting ways. With an XML content server, your university or education resource can pull together all of its content into an XML content server's repository to enable your content applications as well as others to be queried. No matter what form your content is in, unstructured content such as Microsoft Office files and Pdf's are automatically converted to XML. Once loaded, your content is immediately available to drive the creation of new products. As content is created, you can modify, enrich and transform your content as needed to power new applications and features and create new textbooks, using your own database of content or other registered professors and educators.

A repository of reusable components would make it much easier to construct and modify a course. Therefore, open source software, available to strictly educators could greatly alter education, teaching materials and physical materials for the better.

About the Author
About the author: Melissa Peterman is a web content specialist for Innuity. For more information about XML repository or XML content server, go to Mark Logic.

Source: Distance education online, distance learning, online degrees, online university information at goarticles.com