Educational Technologies

Throughout this course, I was introduced to a large variety of technology tools that are beneficial to online education. Thus, the implementation of such tools will definitely engage the students in their education, define the instructor’s role as facilitator, and enhance learners’ critical thinking and problem solving. Ms. Andrea Smith (2015) explored and discussed “grammarly.com”, Ms. Jen Lowe (2015) shared “studyboost.com”, and Ms. Ebru Taskan (2015) introduced her readers to “blogger.com/home”.

https://www.grammarly.com/1

Grammarly is a technology tool that assists instructors in controlling plagiarism as well as proofreading one’s documents grammatically. Based on Ms. Andrea Smith’s blog post (2015), she states that the benefits of implementing grammarly in adult education are not only limited to documents but also it offers “explanation on errors and tips for correction”.  

The description of this program encourages me to consider it as a tool in my adult career. It is valuable, as it will enable me to eliminate or at least control plagiarism in my classes. Moreover, it will allow me to double-check and improve my documents before sharing them with my students.  Also, my students can improve their writing and create documents that are free of errors.

www.studyboost.com

Ms. Lowe (2015) describes the above website as an “interactive social media studying platform that allows students to learn outside of the classroom”. This technology enables learners to challenge themselves with quizzes based on study cards similar to index cards.  In addition, students can easily access midterm exams, specialized exams and even drivers’ permit. The platform is easily used on a mobile phone with an SMS plan, which is a great way to strengthen one’s learning or knowledge anywhere and anytime the person has a few minutes to spare.  Furthermore, it is free to use.

In my adult teaching career, this technology will help my students to review, enhance and really invest time in their learning. Whether the student is riding with someone or waiting at the dentist, s/he can transform his mobile phone to a learning tool.

https://www.blogger.com/home

Ms. Taskan defined weblog and described it as different from regular websites. She stated that weblogs “are comprised of reflections and conversations that in many cases are updated every day” (Taskan, 2015). She shared that reflecting on a paper, a lesson, or a homework is a great way to learn and emphasize on the main ideas. Blogs allow learners to collaborate, exchange ideas, and comment on others’ thoughts in the blog.

Blogs are a tool that enhances learning and create a thread of communication where bloggers can critique, agree, or disagree with the writer of the blog and with each participant. This collaboration develops a learning activity where students are active participants and critical thinkers. These are some of the reasons I’d like to implement blogs in my teaching career.

References:

Lowe, J. (2015, January 28) Mobile Technology [Blog post]. Retrieved from               http://jenloweemergingtechnologies.blogspot.com/

Smith, A. (2015, February 13) Digital Citizenship [Blog post]. Retrieved from

            http://andreasmith6.blogspot.com/

Taskan, E. (2015, January 14) Podcasts and Blogs [Blog post]. Retrieved from

            https://www.blogger.com/home

Digital Citizenship, Ethics, and Netiquette on the Internet

  

Connecting, chatting, instant-messaging, emailing, blogging, researching websites, and distance learning are all activities completed and delivered online. With millions of people interacting daily, new rules and netiquette have to be implemented to ensure safety, security and proper etiquette.

http://www.edudemic.com/15-resources-digital-citizenship-2014/

“Digital citizenship is something that can equip students for a lifetime of safe, responsible Internet use” (edudemic.com). This site offers educators pre-made lessons to introduce students to digital citizenship and provides them with a variety of other resources to promote awareness among Internet users. Edutopia considers “Digizen” a website that “made the cut”, because it invites parents, teachers, and young people to be active, educated online users and encourage them to develop and strengthen their knowledge in digital citizenship. In addition, the site offers a technical vocabulary list to familiarize students with the Internet terminology. The website is very appealing to the eye and well organized, which makes it easy to access and explore. It is filled with emerging technologies, including videos and learning tools.

I would implement this website in my adult education to help my learners in discovering a tool that is not limited to Internet etiquette safety but also to use in their personal and professional life and share it with others to promote netiquette, to become digital citizens, and to interact with millions of users around the globe.

http://www.cyberwise.org/

“No Grownup Left Behind” is a motto for cyberwise.org website. The latter invites adults to understand, explore, and learn “digital life skills”. It is available for educators as well as parents with a wealth of resources such as cyber civics, online courses, workshops, blogs, learning hubs and digital citizenship. Cyberwise bridges the gap between native digital and immigrant digital and enables adults to discover cyberspace with its wealth of educational information in various formats. They become comfortable researching and learning about current technologies in all forms.

This website is a site that I would share with my adult learners to develop and enrich their technology skills to feel they are part of this innovative style of learning, working, studying and communicating.

Distance Education Technologies

To engage learners in distance education and eliminate passive learning, it is imperative that educators enrich and build their courses with technologies that promote interaction and create an active learning environment. Here are two programs:

www.emaze.com

Emaze is an online presentation software built by Visual Software System. This platform allows users to create interactive presentations. It offers a variety of features such as 3D scenes and 2D slides. It can be accessed from any electronic device to be edited by the educator and viewed by learners. It’s also a cloud-based presentation software and runs with any browser. Recently, automatic translation has been added to make presentations in any language, which will facilitate and eliminate language barriers and enable users to create presentations that communicate in the clients’ native language.

Basic presentations are free of charge and limited to the four templates offered by the company. Emaze Pro costs $4.89 per month with 3 collaborators and 2G storage and Emazing for business costs $14.91 per month with unlimited collaborators and unlimited storage space.

The company offers unlimited tutorials to support their clients and its customer service representatives respond to inquiries within 24 hours.  

Implementing this technology in my adult education enriches my presentations and creates an interactive learning session. Students can prepare their own assignments in this format, which promotes hands-on learning, creativity and critical thinking.

www.educanon.com

Educanon is an online collaboration tool that enables educators to integrate questions and activities within a Youtube video, TeacherTube video, screencasts and many other online videos. This integration promotes an active learning environment and increases students’ engagement. In addition, this technology offers instructors a system to keep track of students’ progress, which will assist them to review the critical aspects of a lesson with their students.

Using this collaborative tool with my adult learners will enhance the videos and create an active learning environment. The ability to remove some segments of the video and create questions and/or comments on main contents supports the learners and veer their attention to the important concepts to be learned.

Reference:

http://www.emergingedtech.com/

Games, Simulations, and Virtual Environments

The digital world has expanded and impacted the traditional ways of teaching and learning. Games have become a tool to motivate and engage the digital generation. Good educational games are the ones that "inspire interest, creativity, and social interaction” (Squire, 2011).

http://www.informatist.net/Login.aspx

Informatist is a free online business simulation game. It offers students a platform to practice, learn and apply business lessons.  The interaction with other players promotes an environment where learning and playing build up learners’ skills. Players can register and play without any additional downloads.  Moreover, the software offers guides to learners, which simplify the navigation of the program. This interactive game comes with business fields, products to manufacture, private and public companies, stock market, business mergers, and a large number of employees to work with.

Students in business classes can benefit from this game. For example, my son who grew up playing video games and is majoring in business at CSUN university could be easily motivated and interested in registering with the Informatist’s website.  Moreover, as an adult educator, I would integrate this game to “pique players’ interests” (Squire, 2011). Such game can improve students’ assimilation of topics that are abstract, as well as create “social interaction of different forms and lead to productive practices” (Squire, 2011).

www.french-games.net/frenchgames

French-games is a very interactive free website that covers more than 56 topics in the French language. Neither download nor registration is needed to access the site. The user can start learning any topic of his choice and focus on learning the vocabulary words before playing the games. Tests are also included to enable users to test their knowledge before moving on to the next topic. To increase assimilation of the topic, the site offers 5 French games with activities. Within these games, the learner can choose the topic that interests him/her and deepen his/her learning by matching vocabulary words and short sentences to pictures. Other games are “the beetle and the bee”, “Pelmanism”, “Four in a row”, and “Hangman”. Tutorials are implemented in the site and users are encouraged to visit them before they start playing.

Integrating this game in my virtual class enables the students to really focus on the contents, enhance their skills, challenge themselves and be the owners of their learning. It is an additional resource that strengthens and deepens their knowledge in the target language. Moreover, students can work in groups, which will create a social learning community.

Reference:

Squire, K. (2011) Video games and learning: Teaching and participatory culture in the digital age. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.