Page 14/15 - Activity 18

The first website I visited is probably the better known out of the three, the Open University. If I was to take on a course through the OU it would give me the freedom to choose between a full, and half-time course. What this means is that if I am employed full time I wouldn't have to give up work to learn. In addition to this the OU supplies all of the learning materials necessary to complete the course. I think I would learn well through the OU as it is well organised and there is teacher support for every stage of the way so i'm not left alone and possibly struggling. However if I took the half-time course it could take as long as six years to finish the course, which is a long time to be learning one subject, and if I need to learn more than one the lengthy learning period is doubled.
The second site I visited was the BBC webwise page. Though it was not as formal as the OU, and didn't offer any sort of qualifications , the page was very user friendly. I opted to do a course in basic Information Technology, however there was no lenghty pages of text, instead there was interactive movies, games, and presentations, to informalise the information. In addition to this after I had completed the course, which only took one hour, I found myself remembering things better than I might have if it was just text, because I remebered the game I had played, or movie I watched that related to it. On the other hand there was only a select few courses, with not many to choose from.
As for children, the BBC offers BBC Bitesize, I myself used this for my GCSE revision and found it useful, like with the Webwise site, Bitesize teaches through games like Grade or No Grade, which are just a bit of fun designed to help kids remember. I think the main benefit of a site such as Bitesize is that there is no need to sign up to anything, anyone can visit the site when they need it most. Moreover the information is condensed into smaller chunks, which are more mangable for children. A clear disadvantage however is that the site is only relevant up until a certain age, in my case 16, as it offers no A-Level learning tools.