Today, there are numerous applications and multimedia resources that we as
adult educators can make use of in our classes with learners in order to engage
them and enhance their learning. The
first application I would use to facilitate learning would be Dropbox in which
users sign up for free and reach, share,
and edit documents not only from computers but also phones, or tablets. I have experienced using this application which I
have found to be very easy and practical. In my personal experience, I used
Dropbox in one of the classes I took at
Walden where we were asked to do a group project. We worked on the project collaboratively that
each of us took the lead to complete part of the weekly assignments while other
group members contributed by sharing ideas and editing the paper. In my context where I teach English as a
foreign language to adults, I would use this application as a collaborative
tool which will help me build a community for learners. Introducing a collaborative application,
learners come together outside of the class to work on their assignment in
groups. Additionally, I believe this
application will help my young adult learners to listen to and respect
different ideas and learn to work collaboratively to achieve a common
educational goal. The URL for Dropbox is
http://www.dropbox.com
One other application I would use is a social networking site called Edmodo
for educators and learners. It can be
used to facilitate collaboration between educators and learners in terms of
posting assignments, homework, providing feedback, embedding videos, teaching
learners how to create posts, podcasts.
Additionally, this application can be used as a tool among educators
where they can reach and share resorces about teaching practices. Therefore, Edmodo can serve as a professional community in which educators
share their experiences and knowledge
about their teaching practices.
As an English as a foreign language educator, I would use Edmodo to join
a professional community of educators from all around the world to improve my
teaching practice while learning about several teaching practices and sharing
my own. The URL for Edmodo is http://www.edmodo.com
To conclude, I believe “technology use is important in education therefore
we need to take advantage of the opportunities that applications and multimedia
resources present to help us change
the way we teach and learn. Due to transformative technology, it is essential
to effectively bring technologies to learners in order to enhance and
facilitate their learning” (Richardson, 2010).
References
Richardson, W.(2010).
Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other
powerful web tools for classrooms (3rd
Ed) Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Dropbox and other cloud services are amazing tools for both the work environment and learning environment. At my institution we like to share files with Dropbox, and personally I integrate all of my information with my Google account with Google Drive. Although I'm not trying to make a convert out of use to use more Google products, one thing that I do like more about Google Drive is it's limit is 15GB and plays nicely with Gmail.
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