Adult Education and Technology

Virtual Grocery Shopping

noreply@blogger.com (Marian Thacher) — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 13:57:00 +0000

The grocery industry tried online shopping and delivering groceries, and it didn't pan out. But this idea by a Korean grocery seems to be doing better (so far). If you could choose your groceries while waiting for the subway or bus, and have them delivered right after you get home, wouldn't that be awesome? I hate stopping at the grocery store on the way home from work when I'm tired and hungry and just want to be home. If I could use some time that is already "wasted" standing around waiting, I'd be a happy camper.

m-Learning

noreply@blogger.com (Marian Thacher) — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 17:36:00 +0000

Great presentation by Geoff Stead at the mobile learning conference, mLearnCon, about learning via cell phone worldwide.

m-learning across the world

View more presentations from TribalSlides

Mobile Version of This Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Marian Thacher) — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 23:20:00 +0000

Use this QR code to go to the mobile version of this blog on your phone. Or, go here.

Thanks, Blogger!

An InfoGraphic about Online Education

noreply@blogger.com (Marian Thacher) — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 23:17:00 +0000

Via: OnlineEducation.net

2 Classes of Digital Natives?

noreply@blogger.com (Marian Thacher) — Fri, 27 May 2011 22:42:00 +0000

This article by James Gee on the Huffington Post suggests that there are two classes of literacy - basic literacy that ends you up in a working class job, which now most likely means a low-paid service job, and academic literacy which gets you through college and maybe grad school and lets you speak the language of "research, empirical reasoning and logical argumentation."

Gee suggests that there is a correlation with digital literacy. There are those who can talk about what they are reading and doing online, and those who can talk about how it all works. "He gives an example from a World of Warcraft discussion site. We are evolving a class of people, often self-taught, who can speak the digital language and function in the digital world in ways that get them employed without having to get formal credentials. His question is - is this a new premium class of literacy, or is it the same people who mastered academic literacy? It would require some research to answer this question, but it certainly raised the question for literacy practitioners of what we are really teaching. In digital skills as well as other literacy skills, there are the basics that help you survive, and then the more critical thinking skills that help you thrive and excel.

Learned Something New about Tracking

noreply@blogger.com (Marian Thacher) — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 20:09:00 +0000

I was reading an ePortfolio of a midwife and teacher in New Zealand, Sarah Stewart, which I ran across through a discussion on LinkedIn. I'm interested in how people are creating ePortfolios, both for professionals like adult educators, and for adult learners. Sarah has a page of "citations," which links the viewer to the pages that Delicious users have bookmarked and tagged with her name.

I never thought of looking for myself on Delicious! Come to find out, this blog has been saved 56 times (including the first time by me), and only 4 of those people are in my network. I can explore who these people are, and get a sense of who is interested in my blog. OK, it's not hordes of people, but still. Up to this point I haven't known much about who is reading this, since very few people leave comments, and most of the comments turn out to be spam. So - another nice feature from Delicious.

Language Instruction via Mobile Device

noreply@blogger.com (Marian Thacher) — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 15:47:00 +0000

A lot of interesting discussion going on now about mobile learning. What's the difference between c-learning, e-learning, and m-learning? One quote I read from John Eyles described classroom learning as a well-balanced meal, e-learning or online learning as a sumptuous buffet, and m-learning via cell phone or other mobile device as a power snack. And there are a lot of times when you could really use a power snack!

My interest was piqued by a presentation at the CATESOL Conference by Voxy, a start-up delivering language instruction to Spanish speakers using shortened news stories. You can choose from three different story sets - headline news, pop culture or sports. (Personally, I could skip sports, but that's just me.) You download the iPhone app (Droid app coming soon), and then select the headline of the story you want to read (headlines in Spanish), read the story, select vocabulary to see definitions and add to your list to study later, and answer some comprehension questions. There isn't much instruction here, and there doesn't seem to be any organization in terms of grammar, language functions, or vocabulary. But the exciting thing is the experimentation they are doing with the mobile space.

There are several features that I think aren't functioning yet, but they're working on them. One is location-based content. Walk by a bank, and banking phrases in English become available if you click on the icon of the bank. Same for a restaurant or movie theater. This could be a fun homework assignment for students with iPhones.

Another one was item recognition through the camera. The presenter (and CEO), Paul Gollash, took a picture of my shoe. The app identified it as "black leather shoe." How did it do that?? This could be such a useful language app. Although the company wants the app to be an instructional tool, not a utility, the ability to identify items in another language instantly is pretty intriguing.

Searching for Video

noreply@blogger.com (Marian Thacher) — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 15:14:00 +0000

Jeff Thomas raises a good point - there is so much video online, but it's not always easy to find the video you want. Just searching on YouTube or Vimeo might not be the most effective strategy. He recommends 10 video search engines, and an iPad app for watching video on the iPad. Video search engines include the usual suspects - Google Video, Yahoo Video, Bing Video, but also some I haven't heard of, like Fooooo, Blinkx, and VideoSurf.

Oh, and if you're looking for those specialized videos about technology in adult education, try OTAN's Video Gallery, which now includes the Captured Wisdom videos about adult education technology-based projects, or the Media Library of Teaching Skills (MLoTS).

Dynamic Views for this Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Marian Thacher) — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 23:24:00 +0000

I see that Google has been busy creating new features for Blogger, which is good because I've been frustrated with the layout of my blog. For example, I haven't been able to get the videos from YouTube to size correctly.

Now they have 5 different "dynamic views" that you can use to view any blog that has them enabled. You can see them by adding /view and then/NameOfView to the URL.

For example, to see this blog in FlipCard view, go to http://marianthacher.blogspot.com/view/flipcard/

For the Mosaic view: http://marianthacher.blogspot.com/view/mosaic/

Sidebar: http://marianthacher.blogspot.com/view/sidebar/

Snapshot: http://marianthacher.blogspot.com/view/snapshot/

Timeslide: http://marianthacher.blogspot.com/view/timeslide/

Which one do you like best? Right now you have to type in the URL to see them, but the plan is that eventually I will be able to choose one and set it as the default. My favorite is flipcard, which you can sort by recent, data, label, or author.

Snapshot looks the best, but it's only pulling graphics so the posts with videos or with no graphics don't show up. This view would be really good for an art blog, or a cooking blog that has a photo of every dish.

ISTE's Top 3 Priorities for 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Marian Thacher) — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 15:04:00 +0000

Here are ISTE's top three ed tech policy priorities for this year:

1. Dedicated funding for educational technology (support the continuation of EETT)
2. Technology must be included in every school improvement initiative (Race to the Top, etc.)
3. Broadband for all as a national priority

Having just come from the California Adult Education Administrators Association conference, it's hard not to feel that dedicated funding for every aspect of education is in jeopardy, but the focus on technology continues to be essential. The good news is that it's not debated much any more. There is general acceptance that students need digital literacy skills, and teachers need professional development in this area. The challenge now is shrinking federal, state and local budgets.

History of Educational Technology

noreply@blogger.com (Marian Thacher) — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 14:52:00 +0000

Love this slide show from NYT. Sadly, I remember all of these from the chalk board, invented in 1890. But the most nostalgic is that rasty mimeograph machine. So glad those days are over!

What is your favorite?

Sir Ken Robinson - Concept Animation

noreply@blogger.com (Marian Thacher) — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 08:02:00 +0000

This video by the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), creates a visual representation of a 12 minute talk by Sir Ken Robinson about what's wrong with our current education system. Although I've heard him explain these concepts before, it seemed like the visual support of drawing illustrations of the concepts helped me integrate them better. Does it help you?

Student Videos to Promote Voting

noreply@blogger.com (Marian Thacher) — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 03:08:00 +0000

Susan Gaer's ESL class at Santa Ana College Continuing Education made this video encouraging people to vote! It's part of a contest on the Easy Voter Guide site. There are quite a few other student videos from other community colleges in California. Check them out and get your students to vote for the one they like best!

Videos of Teachers using Facebook

noreply@blogger.com (Marian Thacher) — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 13:53:00 +0000

Exploring fb for education - a wiki dedicated to this topic, with a page of videos of teachers talking about their fb projects. One popular use is having students create a fan page about a historical character, and take on that character's identity on fb.

There is also a group on fb for educators using fb.

PaintMap!

noreply@blogger.com (Marian Thacher) — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 15:06:00 +0000

It's been a while since I've had time to follow a bunny trail. That is not good! We need time to let our curiosity take us down a path without any goal. This morning I followed a Facebook link by Ron Fujihara to an article on the blog Free Technology for Teachers about a tool for creating timelines of news story topics.

The blog is by Richard Byrne, who has published quite a few free books on technology for teachers. I took a look at Google for Teachers, published on ISSUU, which in itself is an interesting site if you ever want to publish a free book or explore beautiful books and magazines from around the world. But I digress from my digression. The new world elevates ADD to an art form, doesn't it?

Back to Google for Teachers. I'm going to embed the whole book here because you can see how ISSUU works, and you can also read the book!

Open publication - Free publishing

So I was flipping through the pages, thinking that this could be a great resource for OTAN's various Google webinars. I was also thinking that there wasn't much new for me here when I came across his description of PaintMap, which describes itself as "a geolocation-oriented painting sharing website." It's a site using Google Earth where artists can upload their paintings and tag the exact spot on earth where they were painted. As a visitor, you can click on a featured location or just explore the world on your own. I looked at Chicago and found this painting of one of the Art Institute lions, painted at night, with an interesting story about the painting.

It must be a fairly new site, as there are only 388 artists signed up so far, and no paintings of Sacramento, or Los Altos where I grew up. But I enjoyed looking at various artists visions of different locations around the world. It's quite different than looking at a map or a photograph. It would make a good addition to a report on a home town or country, or any location. I hope the site flourishes.

Checking out HootCourse

noreply@blogger.com (Marian Thacher) — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 15:59:00 +0000

I'm creating a course called OTAN on HootCourse. The hashtag is #otanhoot. It's a great idea to create an interface that helps teachers conceptualize how to use Twitter for course work and communication. HootCourse relies on Twitter and Facebook for course creation and content, so there is no unique sign in. You can sign in with either your Twitter or Facebook signin. I can write a post on the HootCourse site that will be automatically posted here on Blogger.

Not only that, but I can embed the whole course right here, and post from here. Can you post to Twitter from here too? Oops, I see you don't have to add the course tag, HootCourse does that for you.

Karen Cator at Gov 2.0 Summit

noreply@blogger.com (Marian Thacher) — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 16:40:00 +0000

The Department of Education releases the National Educational Technology Plan, and Karen Cator reviews it at this summit meeting. It still kind of boggles my mind to hear federal officials talking about the long tail, supporting personal passion and motivation in learning, universal design and getting every classroom in the country connected, and broadband everywhere, and even the next generation of assessment - beyond the bubble-in, yes!

I haven't reviewed the whole plan yet, but Ms.Cator did mention in her talk that this plan is for "cradle to career" and that we are all lifelong learners, so a glimmer of adult education is in there somewhere.

Mobile Screen Technology of the Future

noreply@blogger.com (Marian Thacher) — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 05:12:00 +0000

This is a vision of how screen technology will be working by 2014, by a company that does user interface.

Storybird

noreply@blogger.com (Marian Thacher) — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 19:48:00 +0000

Peggy Marcy suggested this site, Storybird. You can create a story using art from various artists. There are many story creation sites, but I like this one because of the art. Different artists post a collection of work here, and you can choose one to illustrate your story. Some of the art is charming, and some is quite beautiful.

My story is for young children, but I imagine your students could get as complex as their language ability allows. My story is about a hungry bear. If your students create a Storybird, please post a link here to share.

Here are some other examples:
A princess who collects too many pets.
Learning life's lessons

Photo Sharing

noreply@blogger.com (Marian Thacher) — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 02:31:00 +0000

I'm preparing for a discussion at the Project IDEAL conference tomorrow about social media tools. All I need to do at this point is add a few examples and links, but it's impossible to do this fast! Every link leads to many possible bunny trails, following one link to another, learning interesting things that may or may not have anything to do with the task at hand. Is this ADD, or multitasking?

I'm reviewing some of the projects created in July and August for the discussion of Social Media in Adult Education, and I'm still surprised at the richness of the discussion. I didn't participate in the photo sharing group, but now I'm looking at their projects linked from the wiki. They created a group on Flickr and had quite a bit of discussion within that group, apart from the list. There are lots of ideas about how to use photo sharing in instruction, especially for ESOL. Illustrations of the alphabet, of everyday interactions (not the happy shopper paying the happy clerk, as one person said), of cooking and canning, of prepositions, of favorite shoes, favorite clothes. The list goes on, and the photos could be collected by teachers or by students. A teacher could create a closed group, where only students in one class could add photos and posts, or the group could be public. Maybe I shouldn't still be amazed at the possibilities of social media, and at the endless creativity of teachers, but I am.

So while I'm at it, I'm going to brag on the blogging group. We had a blog to explore blogging, which has links to the blogs created by the participants. I had 23 people sign up for this group. About 10 actually responded to messages, and 6 created blogs. When I came back a few weeks later, three blogs were going strong and have posted something new in the last day or two. These are good projects, and they're putting me to shame. I better get busy! This may not sound like a good percentage of success, but it's summer, no one is getting paid (group leaders or participants), so this is all a labor of love.

And there were a couple of wonderful posts from Jayme Adelson-Goldstein about being a lurker. She explained how she followed the discussion, did her own projects, but didn't have time to respond on the list. She illustrated the fact that "lurkers" are not always passive observers. Many are using the materials to suit their own needs and professional development, but not posting about it. There are 1400 people on the adult ed professional development list, so if 6 people actively participated in each of 10 groups, and another maybe 150 to 200 participated in some non-public way, that makes it worth the effort!

Eyejot

noreply@blogger.com (Marian Thacher) — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 13:23:00 +0000

Learning so many cool things on the Social Media discussion. Here's a video message left for the group from Steve Quann using Eyejot.

NIFL Social Media Discussion

noreply@blogger.com (Marian Thacher) — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 08:55:00 +0000

The discussion of social media for teaching a professional development in adult education is going strong this week! (Thank you, Jackie Taylor and Nell Eckersly!) Despite being on vacation this week and taking care of two toddlers, I've managed to somewhat keep up with the conversation, and have already learned a lot! You can see everything I've bookmarked so far on my Delicious account. Here are some quick examples:

- If you only have time for one link, check out this one. It's a set of slides by Paul Adams who does user research for Google, and reports on what they've found out about how people really relate to their friends, and how they would like to relate to their online friends and acquaintances, and how companies like Google and Facebook could make it easier than they do now. Really interesting! For example, he says that most people have between 4 and 6 groups of friends that are not connected to each other, like friends from college, friends from early in career, friends from kids school, family, etc. Most groups have between 2 and 10 people in them. We don't just have one big group of 183 friends! Social networking sites need to allow us more flexibility, and more control over privacy.

- This article from Education Week describes the burgeoning use of a variety of social media in K12 education, including Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, Second Life, and others.

- The POST method of choosing the right tech tool for the teaching objective - People (i.e. audience), Objectives, Strategy, Technology. In other words, choose the right tool for the job, not just the coolest tool.

- Emerging Technologies Matrix for Adult Education - Nell put together this list of social media tools that teachers might want to check out.

If you want to see a synopsis of the discussion, Jackie is doing an outstanding job of summarizing it on the ALE Wiki.

Better yet, join the discussion.

Brenda Dann-Messier at CASAS Summer Institute

noreply@blogger.com (Marian Thacher) — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 15:40:00 +0000

Brenda Dann-Messier, Assistant Secretary of Education at the Office of Vocational and Adult Education, at the CASAS Summer Institute - 6 points that OVAE is advocating for WIA reauthorization (and no, we don't know when it will happen):

1. Provide incentives to spur innovation, including increasing the effective use of technology and distance learning.

2. Professionalize our field in order to have highly qualified teachers and leaders. (In California we have credential qualifications but some states don't.)

3. Prepare students for 21st century jobs by strengthening our ties to post secondary education and the workforce, providing and linking to career pathways, strengthening ties to the one-stops, and developing standards for college readiness.

4. Maintain EL Civics and expand it to serve immigrant professionals. The White House now has a working group on "immigrant innovation," and our goals fit with theirs.

5. Increase funding of professional development from 12.5 to 15% in order to support staff to move in these new directions.

6. Strengthen correctional education and re-entry programs by requiring at least 10% of funds to be spent on corrections.

Tech Workshop at CASAS Summer Institute

noreply@blogger.com (Marian Thacher) — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 18:02:00 +0000

Just demonstrating to workshop participants how easy it is to upload a photo from phone to blog. We also talked about wikis, QR codes, mobile learning and Moodle. Slides and handouts are posted.

ABC's of Investing in Adult Literacy Education

noreply@blogger.com (Marian Thacher) — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 18:13:00 +0000

I can't resist posting this alphabet of adult literacy instruction provided by researcher and adult literacy advocate Tom Stitch.

ABC's of Investing in Adult Literacy Education

Tom Sticht
International Consultant in Adult Education

A - An investment in adult literacy education usually produces "double duty dollars," meaning a dollar spent for adult literacy education usually produces many dollars of returns on investment in improved productivity at work, at home, in the schools and in the community.

B - Better educated parents tend to produce better educated children.

C - Childhood education and adulthood education are part of the "multiple life cycles" of education; adults' education produces an intergenerational transfer of language and literacy to their children.

D - Developing integrated basic skills and workplace skills programs is a cost-effective way to increase higher paying job prospects in welfare-to-work programs.

E - Educating adult literacy students has been found to improve self-esteem, motivation to learn, and overall mental health; thus cost- effectively providing health outcomes along with literacy.

F - Federal funding for adult literacy education does not exceed $220 per student while funding for Head Start exceeds $6,000 per student, K-12 exceeds $6500 per student and higher education exceeds $16,000 per student. This is unfair and unjust.

G - Globalization of work means that America's workforce will need to compete with workforces around the world, and adult workplace literacy programs can help workers acquire new levels of skills as new demands arise.

H - Health literacy programs can produce increases in adults' understanding of medical problems before they become critical and contribute to medical cost-savings.

I - Intergenerational transfer from parents to their children of motivation for learning has been found to occur when adults are involved in literacy programs.

J - Just-in-time basic skills education in workplaces has helped adults retain and advance in jobs that would have been lost to foreign competition.

K - Knowledge development is as important as skill development, and faster to achieve, in adult literacy programs that focus on helping adults meet daily demands for reading, writing, and mathematics in functional contexts.

L - Literacy education in adulthood has been found to be an important contributor to the success of pre-school programs of literacy development in early childhood.

M - Military services have valued adult literacy education since General George Washington ordered chaplains at Valley Forge to convert an old hospital into a classroom and use it to teach the ABC's to illiterate soldiers.

N - Navy research near the turn of the 21st century found that each dollar invested in academic (basic) skills training returned $14-$22 dollars in recruitment and training savings.

O - Organizational effectiveness in the areas of recruitment, training, job placement, job promotion, and job productivity has been found in cases where workplace literacy programs have been initiated.

P - Promoting the Adult Education and Literacy System (AELS) of the United States ought to be a major undertaking for communications media, business and industry, and educators at all levels because of the many benefits that this system provides.

Q - Quantitative and qualitative data from research across the last century show that adults can be learn to read, write, compute, and develop functionally relevant knowledge and that this knowledge and skill has contributed to the growth of democracy in our nation.

R - Renewed commitment to adult literacy education by our federal and state policymakers will return itself in greater national achievements in the education of children and the increased global competitiveness of the American workforce.

S - Social inclusion with increased social justice requires that investments in adult literacy education be increased from present poverty levels to levels comparable to the other components of our national education system.

T - Training programs that help under-educated adults move more quickly from poverty or working poor into well paying jobs are possible using cost-effective, functional context designs in which basic skills and job skills education are integrated together into coherent, supportive, developmental programs.

U - Under-educated adults without high school degrees in the United States number in the tens of millions and are presently under-served by a grossly under-funded and marginalized education system. Policymakers need to provide funds to move this educational system from the margins to the mainstream of education.

V - Volunteers have served adults in need of literacy training ever since our nation's beginnings and they continue to serve today. But the services of hundreds of thousands of volunteers need to be reinforced by even greater numbers of full time, paid teachers if the United States is to fully meet the needs for lifelong learning and transfer across life cycles in this more complex age.

W - Women's literacy education is of special importance because research shows that better educated women have fewer children, get better pre-natal and post-natal care, have more full-term babies, send children to school better prepared to learn, and produce greater numbers of secondary school and college graduates.

X - Xenophobia, i.e., fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners, is being fought every day in the Adult Literacy and Education System of the United States by tens of thousands of teachers in programs for both native born and immigrant adults. Better educated adults are less fearful and more accepting of others and this is conducive to better community safety and harmony.

Y - Young adults who are positioned to become parents and who are school dropouts or just poorly educated in the basic skills can receive literacy education and thereby improve not only their own life chances but those of their children when they arrive. Adult literacy education is a form of early childhood education that starts even before children are conceived.

Z - Zest and Zeal for life, greater health, wealth, social inclusion, social justice, family devotion, greater concern for and caring for the diversity of humanity and a greater chance for success in the pursuit of happiness. All these are the realities as well as the intangibles resulting from adult literacy education.

SUPPORT THE ADULT EDUCATION AND LITERACY SYSTEM TODAY!

Thomas G. Sticht
International Consultant in Adult Education
tsticht at aznet dot net