Educational Technologies

Teaching a diverse population of ABE/ GED/ ESL adult learners in a community college environment can be challenging for the reason that every discipline group is at a different skill level. Some of the students are excellent in math but are not good with reading and writing, then   some are great readers with excellent comprehension skills and creative writers, however they cannot multiply and divide. Delivering a variety of course materials through podcasting and video publishing will effectively address the various skills levels as well as learning styles of the adult learners.

Moreover, Flanagan and Calandra (2005) contend that Podcasting is a “cost-effective way to deliver instruction without compromising learning effectiveness” (p.22).  Additionally, podcasting is portable, thus making the podcast technology more effective as an educational tool. The ABE/GED/ESL adult learners could listen to narrative storytelling, lectures, literature while going to work, riding the bus, cleaning the house, or running other errands. The flexibility of the technology allows the users to easily jump back and forth and allows the learners to fortify their content and linguistic knowledge along with recycling the vocabulary.  

Similarly, video publishing can create a significant learning experience for the ABE/GED/ESL adult learners as well. Most people associate video publishing with YouTube, however I am speaking of TeacherTube, which is more conducive to the needs of my adult learners. During the 15 week semester I could easily create a class video project and upload it to TeacherTube, or I could break the class into groups of 3-5 and allow each group to create their own digital story. Digital storytelling is the art of combining narrative with digital media such as images, sound, and video to create a short story according to Dreon, Kerper, and Landis (2011). Moreover, while creating their own digital stories, the learners “encounter an integrated instructional activity that requires them to leverage a host of cognitive, interpersonal, organizational, and technical skills” (Dreon, Kerper, & Landis, 2011, p. 5)

In sum, the two technologies selected can be effective enough to address the learning needs of several types of learners, such as physically disabled learners, learners with learning disabilities, and the beginner literacy learners along with the ABE/GED/ESL adult learners. In addition, the technology is innovative enough to keep the retention of the younger, more tech savvy learners. Furthermore, according to Warschauer and Liaw (2010), “Well-paid jobs involving manual labor are disappearing and even entry level jobs increasingly require technical skills, therefore in short we are becoming both a knowledge economy and an information society and those who cannot access and use information and communication technologies face marginalization”(p.2), thus the Bureau of Labor Statistics supports the argument of the need for the technology in the classroom.   

 

References:

Dreon, O., Kerper, R., & Landis, J. (2011, May). Digital Storytelling: A Tool for Teaching and Learning in the Youtube Generation. Retrieved from Middle School Journal: www.nmsa.org

Flanagan, B., & Calandra, B. (2005, November). Podcasting in the Classroom. Retrieved from International Society for Technology in Education: www.iste.org

Warschauer, M., & Liaw, M.-L. (2010). Emerging Technologies in Adult Literacy and Langauge Education. National Institute for Literacy, 1-25.