Navigate 2.1.3 – Commercial versus Open Virtual Classrooms Quest

While commercial educational programs offer numerous advantages to the education of online learners, sometimes open source applications are the better choice. Commercial applications are usually quite pricey and require students to only access the platform from the school or program that has purchased the product. Students who take online classes from home may be plagued with the cost of these commercial platforms and their costly updates. Free open source applications can be very helpful for the online learner. Before posting anything for my students to access from home, I always save it as an Adobe PDF file first. I am well aware that many of my students have not purchased Microsoft Office, and I do not want to limit my students' access to materials simply because they lack a computer program.