Sunday, April 6, 2014

Oppia- Google’s New Online Interactive Educational Project

Source: bit.ly/R01jPG
In the present day, technology has become essential in the development of education all over the globe. Various new technological tools are being introduced continuously for the betterment of teaching and learning. These modern tools have made education interactive and engaging that helps the teachers as well as the learners. Google has actively participated in the advancement of education over the years and has significantly contributed towards reforming the process of learning. The company has extended its influence in both and traditional and online classrooms through Google Apps for Education, Chromebooks, Android and Play-powered tablets as well as its support to online courses and MOOCs.

Google has recently launched Oppia, a free interactive online learning platform that is set to modify the way we teach, interact, learn and share knowledge. It is an educational tool with quick feedback which lets you take lessons depending on the answers you provide. Oppia is an Open Source project that lets its users develop new online academic activities via web interface. Both teachers and students will be able to share their opinions, teach and learn through presentations, mapping and drag and drop options.

Source: bit.ly/PKn05j
Oppia assumes the function of a mentor and asks relevant questions of the users and thus improves interactivity of the platform. The response of the learner to the questions will then help the teacher to determine how to move forward with the lesson. Google said that it is a smart feedback system which aims to teach the users to learn various topics and skills.

One of the strongest points of Oppia is its interactivity which many tech-based learning tools lack. This interactive feature is known as Explorations. Students and teachers can communicate with one another with this online platform easily. Explorations are basically interactive educational activities which you can create from anywhere in the world and help others to learn from it. As the platform is developed for everyone, you will not be required to have any programming knowledge for creating the explorations. The users can create interactive lessons with text, numerals and multiple choice options. It also supports specific tools like a code evaluator and a clickable map.

Oppia gathers data how students and other learners interact with the content and the explorations. This information is then provided to the exploration authors, so that you will able to fix the mistakes in the lessons. This will help the interactive feature to gradually improve and help the users to understand the lessons better. You will be able to improve the explorations as you gather more information with time. Moreover, you can also embed the explorations into websites. Apart from these, the learners will also receive personalised feedback after they submitted the answers on the explorations.

Source: bit.ly/PXICuQ
Google said that the motivation for Oppia came from the fact that most of the other online educational tools are asynchronous and static in their content delivery. Presentations and video lectures are not interactive enough and thus they usually fail to encourage active participation, dialogue, discussion, and student feedback. Google assures that the intelligent feedback system of Oppia will enable the teachers to modify their explorations through feedback of the learners and the answers they provide.

Furthermore, you will also be able to collaborate with other users to create or modify explorations and the platform also allows to associate different parameters with different learners. As a result, you will be enabled to develop deeper and better interactive lessons.

However, as of now, it is not certain how much support Google will provide for the improvement of Oppia. Its homepage clearly mentions that Oppia is not an official Google product. This indicates that the multi-national corporation has no intention of investing too many resources or manpower into the development of this project. Google is now expecting that computer experts and developers from around the globe will take charge of the educational platform and eventually the online community will look after the repair and maintenance of Oppia.

Nevertheless, the fact is the online educational platform is a useful and learning tool that will surely help a lot of students and learners worldwide. In the near future, the system may also be used for variety of purposes other than education like an extensive feedback system for teachers and companies.

Article Source: bit.ly/1jpSE2j, tcrn.ch/1cURD03,

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