Vocational Education via Internet is the Next Big Thing! :: Sell Websites Buy Web Sites

Vocational Education via Internet is the Next Big Thing! As Eric Parks says, 'I'm certain cybertechnology will replace all the other learning technologies that exist today.' (Caudron 1996, p. 35) The Internet is a network of networks including the World Wide Web (WWW), listservs, newsgroups, and discussion forums along with electronic mail and electronic journals. To help vocational educators make the best use of the web, this essay makes suggestions for using the Internet in the vocational classroom and provide a list of websites of interest to vocational educators. It does not pretend to be an exhaustive list of vocational education resources on the Internet--that list changes daily. As in the earlier digest,much of the information that is included was received as a result of messages sent to several listservs asking how the Internet was being used in vocational education and corporate training. Previously, respondents indicated that they were just getting started and students were spending time surfing the Web, making use of electronic mail, and participating in listservs. The times they are a changin'! Now, in addition to all of the above, students are developing and main taining websites, using digital cameras to evaluate teachers, delivering training to industry, and using materials found through Web searches. A survey by Market Data Retrieval determined that approximately one-third of all public schools are online; that the larger the school, the more likely it is to use the Internet; and that the Internet is used mostly for research. If the integration of the Internet into the classroom is to be successful, teachers must be involved and work with it (Leiken 1996). The examples here show how vocational teachers and trainers are using the Internet. Examples of Current Use It has been suggested that increased use of performance support systems, sophisticated computer simulations and multimedia training programs are changing and diminishing the role of the traditional corporate classroom (Wulf 1996). Companies are discovering that they can use the Internet to distribute information, resources, and learning tools to employees worldwide with relatively little end-user support (Caudron 1996). A high school teacher in Minnesota has developed a website for use in doing career research. Students look for career opportunities on the Web and check the classified ads in the local newspaper, which is also on the Web (M. Savchenko, Internet message, July 3, 1997). In Australia, the Certificate in Workplace Leadership is offered through the Web.