Online Distance Learning Forum

Musings of an Ant Watcher: aka Laura Young's Big Blog of Life and Death: What Did I Tell You? It's Integration Time for Mid-lifers! Myth of The Midlife Crisis

Ecommerce is a rather boring word. Maybe it's the preponderance of the "commerce," rather than the "e," but it in no way represents the truly amazing hold that Internet sales have taken on the world.

In the UK this week, history has been made with the first single getting to number one by ecommerce alone. Available to download since March 13th, but only having gone on sale today, the Gnarls Barkley song "Crazy" hit the number one spot yesterday after being downloaded more than 31,000 times.

Before downloads became part of the way the charts are gauged last year, the singles chart in the UK was bottoming out. Most people no longer wanted to pay between$2.00 ($3.50) and £4.00 pounds for a single. They would rather wait for the album to come out. By using ecommerce, and making singles available for only 79p each ($1.37), the singles chart has been revitalized again.

Gnarls Barkley's Crazy is a great song, but it is also the sign of things to come. Ecommerce is everywhere these days, and whether you are planning to study business, computer science, or any other online degree, you can guarantee you wiil be part of it.

I recently wrote and researched an article on bingo and online bingo. I enjoyed the research because, like many people, I enjoy the thrill of gambling. But it was also some of the quickest $40 I have ever spent - thirty dollars going to play bingo with friends, and ten dollars playing online bingo. Now I’ve written my article, I won’t be going back to the site.

Internet gambling is big big business. Poker, which was has always been popular with young students in the US, is now getting a fierce grip on the Internet gambling market. The immediacy of communication on the Internet, the ease of use - the things that make online degrees such a great idea, seem to be making gambling too easy for those with an addictive nature. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/crossing_continents/4806660.stm

Any pass-time can become a potential addiction. Online poker is no different. At least we can see the counterbalance of this on the Internet, where more and more people are using online study to forge a psychology career. Those who are interested in counseling or have some background in psychology can specialize in areas such as addictions. Psychology careers and voluntary working in counseling can make a big difference in addressing the growing problem of gambling addiction.
Those who choose to work in school psychology can use this forum to alert kids to the dangers of gambling - just one more issue that needs to be taught alongside the perils of drugs. I would hope that online degrees in counseling and psychology will continue to grow in popularity, alongside psychology careers, because Internet gambling certainly shows no signs of slowing down.

The Oscar success of Wallace and Gromit and Corpse Bride’s Animation Award yesterday have shared the honours nicely between these triumphs of animation. Watching Wallace and Gromit with my children last week, I marvelled at the sheer depth and detail. Freeze any frame of animation and you’ll see a visual joke. Listen to any line of the script and you’ll find the audio equipment. Even if I were ever to work in this kind of animation it would be on the script. I am in awe of the artistic talent of these people.
I am very proud of Wallace and Gromit as a very British work. The truth is, the creators have been given the scope by their connection with Dreamworks. I have written before of the number of animation jobs that will be coming up with Dreamworks, and if I had the talent to undertake an animation degree and go for animation jobs, that’s what I would be doing. I can think of few things in the film world that are as exciting as animation right now.

The news in the UK and US at the moment is full of editorial about the continued inequalities for women in the workplace. In the US, the number of women working outside the home has slipped in the last five years. In the UK, women continue to lag behind men in the salary stakes.

The truth is, for most of us there just aren’t enough hours in the day to have it all. Most of the working mothers I know who successfully fit their career around their children have the full support of their partner, who shares at least half the work with them.

To rise to the very top of the tree often means working rigid hours. But many women and men these days don’t actually want to get to the top; they just want a career that pays decent wages, gives them job satisfaction and fits in with all their other commitments, be they children, hobbies or just wanting to relax now and then!

A good education is essential to give women and men more choice in the workplace. Online study can play a role in this. Accounting is a perfect example. A man or woman working in finance can earn accounting qualifications over a period of time, perhaps allowing them to take on either full-time, or more lucrative accounting jobs when the time is right.

Accounting is a career that affords great flexibility, so mothers or fathers who want to work from home or to flexible hours could do a lot worse than online study in accounting.

In my view, flexibility is the key to working and education in the future. If getting to the top means no flexibility, then I don’t want to go there.

The UK band the Arctic Monkeys are like a breath of fresh air. They are interested in the music - not the celebrity status that goes with it, which is why the Arctic Monkeys have announced that they will not be making any more TV promotional appearances.

Arrogance? For some bands maybe, but with their debut album became the fastest-selling album of all time last year, the Arctic Monkeys have more right than most. What’s more, it was all due to the buzz they had gained through Internet marketing. This was largely due to the social networking site MySpace.

With 57 million registered users, MySpace is very much part of the social networking site phenomenon. Members can build their own websites, list their interests and meet people in a safe environment.
The social networking website has also, as we know, become an excellent platform for Internet marketing. MySpace showcases musical talent and allows bands like the Arctic Monkeys to build up a following without going down channels which many younger people now find uncool and even distasteful. This shift in attitudes about Internet marketing is all great news for the online degree.

Here in the UK college students do not have quite the same reputation as those in the US. There is no doubting the quality of our universities - and I don’t just mean Oxford and Cambridge, but students have traditionally been seen as beer-swilling, junk-food eating slobs.

Apparently, these days this is no longer true. You are as likely to see a student in the gym as in the pub, and with rising fees, most students spend more time serving behind bars than drinking at them.

The point is, it got me thinking about how much further education has changed in the 13 years since I finished my degree. Educational institutions are having to become fitter and leaner - just like their students.

Moreover, students who would struggle to pay for a full-time degree now have the chance to work and study in equal measure. Flexible options such as online degrees are helping to change the face of the modern student.

Another big difference is the range of degrees available today. Paralegal studies, homeland security and networking are relatively new online degrees, but all of them have proved successful among both high school graduates and working professionals.

Online degrees such as networking reflect a world of business almost unrecognisable from the one I entered in 1993. We can expect many more changes in the future.