A word, or new use for a word, should, because of its context, not only slip into usage unnoticed but ought also to be immediately comprehensible.
I like 'e-learning.'
When I began studying Open and Distance Learning in 2001 'online learning' and 'web-based learning' covered the topic - inadequately it would appear. We ditched 'iLearning' as pertaining to nothing more than 'interactive' and therefore missing all things WWW, all things Web and Internet. iLearning could be done off-line which somehow diminished it.
All of this is as much an off-line experience as an online one.
This is what the Internet 'affords' we can trawl for chunks of information and take it all 'off-line' if we wish. At times I don't know or care to know if I am online or not, receiving messages or not, on, in or under this 'digital ocean,' or on the beach, catching this binary fret.
There are no paramteres, no boundaries ... information is chunked and diced and hung out to dry or digitise, to flourish or flounder.
Can consciousness be defined? Bagged? It is no different whether express in print or online.
So why e-learning but not e-consciousness?
They're of the mind and the mind defies being differentiated by platform.
o-Learning. With Socrates, it is oral.
p-Learning. With Caxton, in print.
tv-Learning. With the OU, in the middle of the night.
e-Learning. Anywhere on the Internet.
Though if it is like e-mail that it is little more than electronic ping-pong with gobbets of data.
iLearning. Interactive or personalised to the 'id,' with 'me' in mind?
iou-Learning. Interactive or 'Internet Open Universtity' Learning.
‘Part of the difficulty of understanding and implementing e-learning is that there is no one unique description for ‘e-learning; terms and conflicting definitions abound – ICT, learning technologies and e-learning are all terms that have been described to cover aspects of this area.’
How does 'e-learning' or 'e-tivity' translate? Do other languages adopt these terms as 'loan words?' Or do the have their own words for these things? What are they?
REFERENCE
Conole, G; White, S and Oliver, M in Conole and Oliver (eds) Contemporary perspectives in E-Learning Research. (2007)