In the recent years, E-Learning has created a new dimension in education, both within and beyond the curriculum and is still looking at further opportunities of becoming more useful via new emerging technologies. We are really on the threshold of new opportunities and this is just the beginning of a new horizon of education. E-learning is about learning theory and it is also about technology. To create an e-learning program we must be able to create content that is consistent with the academia, literature, and best practices around learning theories. The biggest factors in enabling the emerging e-learning renaissance stem in part from ever-cheaper and more available CPU cycles and ubiquitous Internet access, but also from ongoing increases in interactivity, communication, collaboration, animation and other techniques to help bring training concepts, activities, labs and problem-solving to life in the e-learning materials (or environments) themselves.

Most online universities rely on instructors that have written classroom material and taught in a traditional classroom to design and develop online courses. These instructors, who are really in essence subject matter experts, become responsible for making decisions on how a course looks, how it behaves, and how content is broken down and linked together, as well as what sorts of media elements such as text, graphics, audio, video best support the learning. Further, learning content can be either Web-enabled or deployed on the intranet and managed through Learning Management Systems (LMS).

More over, very often companies need to upgrade their employees by offering re-training programmes. These are both costly and time consuming. By designing these programmes and content via e-Learning methods both time and money are saved. The innovative method is also self promoting as it increases the curiosity level of individuals for self promotion and career enhancements. Also, for product demonstrations they are using E-Learning courses.

In this issue:

• Latest news
• The Emerging E-Learning
• RITCH COURSEWARE
• Free downloads

UNESCO is maintaining Free Open Source Software repository which contains many useful freeware, shareware for Eductaion. You may visit UNESCO