Is an Online Education Right for You?

We live in the information age. We have grown so accustomed to information at the speed of light that the prospect of not having immediate access to countless numbers of facts and figures with the mere click of a few buttons for many of us is simply disconcerting. For this reason, it only makes sense that there are many people across the nation and around the world that are embracing the idea of online learning and educational opportunities with every ounce of enthusiasm they can muster.

At the same time there are equal numbers of people around the world who are trying desperately to hold on to traditional methods of dealing with certain things. In fact, some people actually still play solitaire with a deck of playing cards. For people who feel that the information age has left them behind to some degree the chances are quite good that online learning may not be the best available option for you.

Below you will find a few questions that can help you narrow down whether or not you would truly benefit by taking some of the many online courses that are being offered in today's information age of learning.

1) Are you disciplined? This may seem like such an innocuous question because we would all like to think that we are disciplined to some degree. The problem is that when you are in the driver's seat for your own education you need to have a little more than some small degree of discipline. You need to be able to meet deadlines, take the tests, and hold yourself responsible for actually learning the information that you need to learn in order to pass the course. There is no one to blame but yourself if you do not manage to do well in your online classes and some people simply do not like being in the drivers seat when it comes to motivating and pacing themselves and their learning practices.

2) How do you learn best? We all have different methods of learning for which we retain information better than others. Online courses are reading intensive. If you have difficulties retaining the information you read you may need to find an alternate learning method or seek solutions with the assistance of the course instructor before moving forward in an online learning environment.

3) Do you have a true desire to succeed? The answer to this question is quite important in determining whether or not online learning is in your best interest. There are many paths you can take in order to achieve the education and degree you desire. This is not the path of the masses, at least not yet. This type of learning, more than any other is easy to give up on through apathy. If you aren't determined to do the assignments, to study the notes, and to really learn the material that is presented to you then you really do not need to waste your time or the instructor's time by continually making up excuses. Online courses are largely self-paced but you do have a limited amount of time in which to learn the material before you need to move on. The teacher is responsible for providing you the information and material but you are responsible for everything that happens from that moment on. Are you ready for that responsibility?

Whether you are a first time college student or a professional that is returning to school after a long absence online learning can open new doors of opportunity for your learning pleasure. You must be willing to walk through those doors and take the information that is presented to you however in order to be successful. My sincere hope is that everyone reading this will carefully consider whether or not the lack of structure that many online courses provides is going to be conducive to your specific learning and educational needs before taking the plunge.

Periodic Table Game

I've just added a new science game to my website. It's a fun fair style arcade game to help in learning the chemical periodic table.

Details and download at:
www.greyolltwit.com/periodic-table.html

Grey Olltwit
www.greyolltwit.com
www.go-education.com
www.go-games.com

Arrogant Madonna Booed In Bucharest

Madonna stopped her concert half way through in Bucharest last night to launch into one of her 'human rights' speeches. Many of the musicians and dancers she had employed were gypsies and the crowd politely applauded the fact but when she started on about how sad she was that the gypsies, or roma as they are officially known, were badly discriminated against in this part of Europe, the boos and whistling started. She should be thoroughly ashamed of herself. Not only was most of the concert badly mimed but she grossly offended the Romanian people with her arrogant remarks.

I am an Englishman living in Bucharest and Romania is the only country in the world where gypsies are tolerated. They are a nomadic people originally from India and it is an inbuilt part of their culture to beg and steal. Often to the extent of disfiguring themselves or children (often not their own) to gain pity and more money. I have seen this with my own eyes. Small children begging between moving cars, have to take all the money they receive to the adult gypsy who is controlling them. No charity on earth will ever break this and yet these do gooders believe that it is Romanians who make their lives so poor.

Remember, every other European nation has sent thousands of gypsies 'home' to Romania, the only country who will have them. Europe should be grateful to Romania not patronising to them. And as for Madonna, most people paid between a weeks and a months wages to see her perform and she provided them with a mostly recorded performance, including mainly dance which most could not even see. Shame on you.

Google Algorithm Exposed

The Google algorithm is shrouded in mystery when in fact it is very simple. It doesn't matter what content you have on your page. It is only about who links to you, their relevance and their importance. You can have the best website in the world and have thousands of inbound links and still appear much lower down than a crap site that has a handful of links. How? Well the secret is that the site with a handful of links has a couple from US government .gov sites (not UK government as Google doesn't see them as important) and a couple of links from US university .edu sites (same again with Google, UK universities are not important). Plus these links to you must contain the keywords you want to rank highly for.

I can hear the howls of derision from SEOs everywhere. OK so you want proof. Search on Google for the keywords 'educational software'. Several results on Page 1 do not contain this keyword phrase, 2 have little content and 1 has not content at all, in fact that 1 site says 'momentarily under construction' and has done since 2003. Sadly you cannot verify the back links so well as Google hides some of its backlink results (i.e. .edu and .gov links) 'to protect webmasters' according to Matt Cutts (yes Matt we belieeeeeeve you. Well you are the Holy Ghost after all).

Everyone with a website can, and probably does, show up on Page 1 of SERPs for keywords i.e. try typing in your full name or some contact information that appears on your website and you should see yourself. The difficult bit is showing up for keywords that are searched for in much bigger numbers. With other search engines following Google with this US University and Government favoured algorithm (now do you see why Google became so popular and got a ton of investment!!!) I cannot see the situation getting any better for genuine optimisation efforts, you just need those 'important', relevant, inbound links.