CARE WHEN USING VIRTUAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS.

Taken from;  https://www.digitallearninglab.org/investigating-virtual-learning-environments/

Written by Patricia Mauricio

EFL Teacher

Ministry of Education - Costa Rica

Educative Region of Coto.

Care  when using Virtual Learning Environments.

Virtual Learning environments must be understood as a tool that become great allies to the teachers and students.  These tools enhance teaching and learning process providing opportunities to develop what is called Global Competence. They can enrich and facilitate the teaching –learning process by offering a number of digital resources found and organize in these virtual spaces. These resources provide contents, promote creativity and critical thinking, and offer feedback among the participants using the web. Collaboration and Interactivity are at the base of these tools. These are the benefits of Virtual learning environments.

But as any tool, there are some aspects to take care about when using these tools to really achieve the mentioned benefits. According to Acuña Solano (2015) in his article “Sound Strategies for the Integration of both Open & Institutionally Supported Technologies in One’s Teaching”, there are four aspects to take care with virtual learning environments.

The first one is that the produced materials have an embedding code to make it the display of the material easier. The second one is the user needs to have some kind of expertise to control and regulate efficiently the virtual environment that is being used, other way it can become a bad idea to use it. The third aspect deals with the ability to exchange and to transform this exchange in a normal experience to get the best of the use of the virtual learning tool. Finally, it should be useful to have a printed guide to use it when a refreshment is needed. The author of the article recommends the use of tutorials.
These foour recommendations made us the teacher to be aware and concious about basic things we have to have in mind when using Virtual Learing Tools with our students. 


REFERENCES.

- What is Virtual Learning Environment?
https://fireflylearning.com/what-is-a-virtual-learning-environment-vle

- Sound Strategies for the Integration of both Open & Institutionally Supported Technologies 
in One’s Teaching. Acuña Solano, Jonathan. 2015.
http://reflective-online-teaching.blogspot.com/2015/08/sound-strategies-for-integration-of.html